If a woman sleeps with her AIDS-infected husband without protection, knowing he has the disease and that it will kill her if she contracts it, is she committing suicide according to religious law? Assume no coercion is involved.
(Yes, this is inspired by the Catholic Church/AIDS in Africa thread currently running in the Pit.)
Can there really be a clear definition of suicide, religious or otherwise? It seems to me that sleeping with her AIDS-infected husband certainly increases her risk of dying sooner, but is that enough to make it “suicide” per se?
I mean, it’s not as direct and immediate as a shotgun blast to the head. It requires that several possibilities turn out a certain way: She has to first get HIV-infected, then she has to develop AIDS, then she has to suffer from some other illness that her weakened immune system cannot defend against, then she has to respond poorly to medical treatment, and finally she dies. If that’s considered suicide, wouldn’t smoking be too? And, for that matter, eating an unhealthy meal at McDonald’s?
Another thing to consider might be her primary motivation. If she purposedly slept with him to get herself killed, that’d certainly be more suicidal than if she just wanted to have sex with him (in which case her death would be a mere side effect, no?)
It does. Several Catholic religious orders distribute condoms for this purpose in poor areas.
According to several of the links being thrown around in the Pit thread, this is not the case.
I suppose the parallel to smoking is apt, but not everyone who smokes develops deadly diseases, whereas every AIDS patient has died (yes, people can live for decades with HIV, but it’s always fatal eventually). I guess the fact that it’s a delayed death counts for something; there could always be a cure developed in the interim between contraction of the disease and the woman’s death.
Another thought I just had: is signing a living will asking for your machine to be turned off or feeding tube to be removed considered suicide? I know Catholics (among others) are against living wills, but is it because it’s a “suicidal” act or for some other reason?
What’s the Church’s stance on Russian roulette?