By Ellen Kolb
I doubt that Maggie Karner rang in the new year thinking she was going to be asked to speak at a conference against assisted suicide. She probably didn’t foresee the suicide of Brittany Maynard or the very well-publicized media campaign that went along with it. She certainly didn’t expect to be diagnosed with a brain tumor. Yet there she was in front of me at the recent East Coast Conference Against Assisted Suicide, speaking quietly but without hesitation.
She’s as compelling a speaker in person as she is in her now-famous video message to Maynard, made in an unsuccessful attempt to dissuade Maynard from suicide. As conference host Alex Schadenberg from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition said after her presentation, “Maggie is a gift for us.” That “us” goes far beyond the people who were in the room at the time.
“I’m no expert. Just me.”
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Maggie Karner (East Coast Conference) |
Self-effacing but not shy, Karner began by advising her listeners at the conference, “I’m no expert. Just me.” She was diagnosed in April with glioblastoma, the same type of brain tumor that beset Brittany Maynard. She recorded her video message to Maynard with that common experience in mind. She found after her video went viral that her cancer was the one thing some news reporters found relevant in her message.
She described a recent interview she did via Skype with a news outlet in Bogota, Columbia.
“It turned out to be an informal debate, and they didn’t tell me that. On the air with me was the communications director for Compassion and Choices [the pro-assisted-suicide group], who spoke Spanish, of course. I don’t. And a pro-euthanasia doctor from Miami, who also spoke Spanish. So I’m the only white gringo there who didn’t speak Spanish. One thing the producers and editors all mentioned was that they wanted to interview me because I had the same terminal brain cancer diagnosis [as Maynard], and apparently that made me qualified to speak on this topic of physician-assisted suicide. I guess they were looking for that emotional right hook as the media is wont to do.
“But that left me wondering, does that mean that anyone without a terminal diagnosis can’t express their opinion on assisted suicide? Even after all the TV interviews and YouTube hits on the video to Brittany, I still got lots and lots of tweets and comments that basically said ‘who are you to judge her?’ Even with my brain tumor qualifications. So I guess that’s what our post-modern society has left us now: if you have an opinion on something, apparently you are judging the people who have a different opinion, and [I should] just shut up.’ What happened to the great free American marketplace of ideas? What happens to vigorous scholarly debate with issues that affect our whole society? I guess you can only have an opinion on something now if you’ve lived through it, felt its wrath, or walked in its shoes. Because it’s all about feelings. If you have evidence on the positives or negatives of something, that apparently doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how you feel about the issue and whether people like how you said it.”
“It’s a public policy issue”