Resolved: People have the right to kill themselves

Great Debates
61

picunurse: I am sorry for the pain you went through, but you can’t win an argument by appealing to our pity. And stick monkey makes the right point: if you really loved them, you would respect their decision to do what they want with their life. You act as though they have some responsibility to keep living so that you are not unhappy. GUess what? You are responsible for your own unhappiness, not someone else.

Blalron, where do you get off deciding for me that a year is “not a long time”? If you think it isn’t, fine, live your onw life that way. I won’t bother you. But keep your stinking, busybody definitions out of laws that affect MY life and MY choices, OK?

Super Gnat, a nursing mother has every right to put whatever she pleases in her system, as long as she stops nursing. She has no right to poison a baby. But we have no right to force her to keep nursing.

62

Stickmonkey & Cole
I have no need to win an argument. First of all, I am not unhappy. I am grieving. There is a difference. Second, his wife survived after many weeks in the hopsital recovering, and no, it wasn’t phychological treatment, but a very expensive and painful physical recovery. She no longer has suicidal thoughts. We have talked many hours about the hows and whys. She said there wasn’t anything different on that day from any other. She also said that it never occurred to them that it would make work for the people they loved. They never looked beyond the moment they closed their eyes.
In fact I do respect his decision. I know about the demons he fought. I’ve never been angry with him.
But your smug intellectualizing is abhorent. You are merely going through the obligatory second and third decade angst that we all experience. You only think you’re special, because it’s not worth talking about once you’re through it.
I, in fact, agree that in the face of real, physical,and incurable pain one should be allowed to choose to end their suffering.
My son and his wife took mescaline together on her birthday (BTW the day after mine) They had some financial problems, so the barbeque grill in the bedroom was the solution.
Suicidal thoughts in an otherwise healthy individual, is a symptom of depression.
Enough. You simply aren’t worth my time. I won’t be coming back to this thread, so don’t bother to try to justify yourselves. I won’t bereading it.
Have wonderful lives.

63

Ok, thanks.

64

Not appealing to your pity, but your compassion.

Suicide is always a mistake. It is a self-centered expression by those who are depressed because they are self-centered.

An alcoholic drinks to forget he is a alcoholic.

These kind of vicious circles can be broken very easily and completely “if” the person caught in them really wants to break them.

AA is 100% effective in curing alcoholics “if” the person stays the course and completes it.

The cure is the choice of the one suffering. I have met many who really don’t want to be “cured”, they get a certain value from being depressed. Others pity them and they are not expected to do the hard things in life.

I worked at a hospital for several years. We had a support group that met twice a week. Many people came through that group and were helped. I remember saying five words to a person that was suicidal, and wouldn’t leave her house except to work and buy food. These five words changed her life perspective so she now lives normal without fear. The five words were “you are not your thoughts.” Once she separated her thoughts from herself she could see clearly again.

The cure always lies within the problem. But the desire to find a better way must be strong.

Love

65

People have the right to kill themselves: maybe true

But…they also have responsibilities. Don’t you think that it’s not wise for a nursing mother to kill herself (as posted), or for a father to call his family outside just to blow his brains out? In no way am i advocating suicide, but if your gonna do it, think about the consequences to other people. Your trying to kill yourself, not others.

66

As the poet John Donne once said, “No man is an island.” The value to others of a person’s life is far too precious to allow the individual to claim complete autonomy in making a decision to end that life.

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Frankly, I’m always a little stunned that there are people who would deny an individual the right to end his or her own life. Yes, that person has responsibilities to others. Yes, shirking those responsibilities is selfish. No, it’s not something I can imagine doing, knowing the pain it would cause friends and loved ones.

But it’s still my body, and my life, and no one else has strong enough claim to it to make me live it against my will.

If I decide, out of the blue, to kill myself because I don’t like the fact that the sun rises in the east, that’s my decision. If you’re my friend, you’ll try and talk me out of it, because I’m obviously off my gourd. And if I remain steadfast in my conviction to protest this cosmic injustice… that’s my right.

I find an attitude to the contrary utterly repugnant.

68

Ok, what about 6 months?

One month?

A week?

A day. A SINGLE day. Just to think it over?

Maybe watch a two hour, neutral documentary pointing out the pros and cons of suicide? If one proceeds to go ahead, they can pay a nominal fee to pay for the disposal of their body and other administrative costs, and then die painlessly with the help of a lethal injection?

I realize you place a strong value on personal autonomy, and I can understand allowing the individual will to ultimately prevail. But if you want to say that other peoples concern for your life is worthy of ZERO consideration, I simply can’t buy that.

69

Why is it selfish when a person wants to end their own life, but not when they’re friends don’t want to miss them? I don’t get it. Anyway.

I do believe that most people who are or become suicidal would reach a point, probably pretty quickly, where they would change their minds if left unable to affect their resolution, so it presents a problem. You want a person to have control over their lives to make mistakes; in this case, however, the problem is that suicide isn’t a mistake in the strictest sense. You can’t undo it, you can’t take it back, you can’t make up for it or change your mind or apologize. Plus, the things likely to drive a person to suicide are such that those wanting to do it are likely to be the least capable of judging such a thing.

I think that’s the big idea behind trying so hard to stop people from killing themselves.

I mean, in everyday life, suicide is just sort of automatically ruled out. We expect ourselves and each other to value survival, to value our lives. It’s, well, pretty fundamental, so I think it is darned natural to say that when someone wants to end their life they’re not thinking right ie normally.

I don’t think it is impossible that a person could come to the reasoned conclusion that they should end their life; certainly euthanasia seems to have a place among reasoned situations, at least for me (but I think that’s really a seperate debate, it was only meant to be illustrative). The problem I have is in actually understanding what that would entail in the general sense so that, should the need ever arise (heaven forbid), I could accept it.

Blalron

I’m not a psychologist, but it seems to me that this would really have little effect as it would require them to hold many of the values we do in normal circumstances. From what I understand, though, those who would commit suicide or are suicidal can think that they are doing this for the good of others, that their continued existence is a strain on their friends, family, or children, so on this view you could say such an intervention might help.

I’m sure many of us have been suicidal at some point in our lives, or have known someone who was. Or maybe my life and my friends’ have been uncharacteristically strained. In any event, decrying suicide as some evil deed won’t help those who are suicidal actually feel better about themselves. Seems to me, YMMV.