Right to Die

from the right to die.”
    The girl raised her voice over more grumbling and less shushing. “I’m not asking you intellectually, Professor. I’m asking you morally. Is it right to kill that baby?”
    From the lower left section, a black female voice said, “Answer the child.”
    Andrus said, “I’ve already given you my best answer on that.”
    Reverend Givens cut in. “Child, you want my answer on that?”
    Reluctantly, I thought, the pink beret said, “Sure.”
    “Well, my answer is simple. You kill that baby, and you’ll never forgive yourself. You’ll never in your life forget. You have that baby, and somebody will give it a fine home and a good upbringing.”
    Gun yelled out, “What if it comes out half black?” Givens shaded her eyes with her hand, and others in the audience turned to glare at Gun, then turned away as he and his cohort gave them the finger. The salt-and-pepper police team looked at each other and started forward.
    Givens said, “I can’t see you, but I’m guessing from the tone of your voice you’re the type that does better wailing from the darkness than speaking in the light.”
    A solid round of applause. The cops hesitated, then went back to the wall and crossed their arms.
    Givens said to the pink beret, “Child, however that baby comes out, you come see me if you have any troubles about it.”
    More applause as Olivia Jurick gratefully pointed to a well-dressed older black man.
    “Dr. Eisenberg. Can you tell me, Doctor, how all of us are going to be able to afford keeping all these patients alive while you and your friends at the hospital get upward of five hundred dollars a day?”
    Eisenberg winced. “That’s, uh, more a question for a hospital administrator than a doctor.”
    “But you’re the one’s been saying it here.”
    “Yes, well, you see, it’s not really you who pays for all that. The insurance companies do.”
    “Out of the goodness of their hearts, huh?”
    “Well, no, no, of course not. From premiums they collect and investments they make. But—”
    “And who be paying those premiums, Jack?”
    Del Wonsley said, “Right on.”
    Jurick said, “I wonder if we could have another question? Yes?”
    The black man shook his head in disgust as he sat back down. Jurick’s finger pointed to Walter Strock.
    Strock rose, Kimberly watching him as if he were the Hope diamond. “Two questions, if I may. First, for Professor Andrus. Professor, earlier you referred to a constitutional ‘right to die.’ Now, you’ll certainly agree that the Supreme Court of the United States in the Cruzan case established only that a patient has the right to decline life- sustaining medical aid. I wonder, where in the Constitution do you encounter the right to life-terminating assisted suicide?”
    Andrus spoke very evenly. “Our country was founded on the principles of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The right to liberty must include a right to die. Otherwise, ‘life’ and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ would become inconsistent concepts now that medical technology can, as I said earlier, prolong a painful, hopeless ‘life’ without any possibility of ‘pursuing happiness.’ ”
    “How imaginative of the Founding Fathers to include all that.”
    Over the laughter his sarcasm triggered, Strock said, “And my second question is for Dr. Eisenberg. In your remarks, Doctor, you voiced concern over the situation in which you are asked to terminate a patient who has become a burden on his family?”
    “Yes?”
    “I wonder, are you more concerned about terminating a patient whose timely death might benefit his family?”
    Alec Bacall said, “The pompous little shit.”
    Eisenberg sensed something, but I’m not sure he got Strock’s innuendo, because he just said, “Why, yes, of course.”
    Strock closed with a flourish and a smile. “Thank you, Doctor. That’s all I have.”
    As Olivia Jurick looked over the crowd, Gun got to his feet.
    “Hey, I got a question.”
    Jurick said, “If you could wait—”
    “My question is how come you don’t have somebody who can talk for real Americans on this panel?”
    Jurick said, “Sir, if you—”
    The other skinheads prepared for protection as the cops moved toward them.
    Gun cranked it up. “How come we got to listen to a shine, a kike, and probably a dyke did her own husband? How come nobody talks about the race criminals in this country trying to strangle it and strangle the people who built