Sanctioned suicide

[Clothahump]

Inspired by The Pit thread about suicide by train, where Flight asks:

Hmm, now that makes me wonder what the most considerate way to commit suicide is. You would need to make it the easiest and least traumatic you could for the people who had to take care of your corpse. You would also want to make sure that you were found by professionals who were expecting to find you.

I responded:

Make assisted suicide legal everywhere. Set up…I don’t know what to call them, suicide stations, I guess…staffed by professionals who will help you leave a last message, fill out a will, become an organ donor, whatever, then escort you into a room where you lie down on a comfortable bed. They then give you an anesthetic that knocks you out instantly, then stop your heart with lethal injection or hook you up to breathe nitrogen or something like that. They then bundle your carcass off to a funeral home, notify next of kin, etc.

And people still wouldn’t use them but would jump in front of trains or off bridges.

And Maastricht responded to that:

The theoretical pros and cons of such an institution are very interesting idea, worthy of a GD thread by themselves.

Con: makes it easier for people who are just depressed or panicked to choose a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Pro: solves a lot of the problems listed in this thread, including that of the lack of organ donors and the problem of really, really unhappy people who keep on living just to go on living. And while it is a taboo thing to say, I don’t think we should have an obligation to keep on living if we have been unhappy for most of our lives and there isn’t really much improvement possible according to the current state-of-the-art -medical and psycholocical science.

Yeah, I know, death squads. But in this case for people who want to appear in front of one.

So - a GD topic. Should suicide be unstigmatized and assisted, even encouraged in some cases? (Mods, if you think this belongs elsewhere, such as IMHO, please feel free to move.)

[Boyo_Jim]

I won’t say “should”, but I will say “will”. I think it’s inevitable. The serious debate will be over who is eligible to do it.

As for candidates right now, aside from the terminally ill, I think prisoners with life sentences should have an assisted suicide option, though I have no idea how many would use it. They can spare themselves decades of dreary lives and punishment, and society can save the cost of maintaining their dreary lives and punishment.

[TriPolar]

I don’t think people will want to pay the political price for an idea that will have such strong opposition, at least in the case of healthy people, not imprisoned for life. Voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill, and essentially voluntary death sentences for life term prisoners could get accepted. But I don’t think there’s a possible route to state sanctioned suicide for healthy people in the world we know.

[Ruby_Slippers]

Yes, it should be unstigmatized and assisted. Your description sounds quite reminiscent of the scene in Soylent Green, and I have long thought that we should offer something like that. I would add at least one more candidate group to Boyo Jim – the elderly and infirm. I’m thinking specifically of people like my mother. She’ll be 90 in May, still has most of her faculties, and can get around with a walker. She’s in assisted living and says that she’s one of only three or four that still have “most of their marbles” as she puts it. She’s horrified at the thought of declining to that point and has said quite often that she’d rather die, that she’s ready to go. Now I don’t know for sure that she’d follow through if the option were actually available, and I certainly wouldn’t be urging her to do it, but I think it should be an option. I’d like that option myself at a later date.

I do think there should be at least one in-depth counseling session to ensure that the choice is being freely made and that it’s a reasonable choice. But the choice should be there.

[Revtim]

Unstigmatized and assisted, absolutely. Encouraged? That makes me uncomfortable. Maybe if I were to hear the cases you had in mind.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Yes, it should. There’s no objective reason for it not to be, unless the suicidee (?) is a parent/guardian of a minor.

[Peremensoe]

@Boyo_Jim

I won’t say “should”, but I will say “will”. I think it’s inevitable. The serious debate will be over who is eligible to do it.

As for candidates right now, aside from the terminally ill, I think prisoners with life sentences should have an assisted suicide option
…

Wouldn’t it be kind of crazy to offer a freedom and service to heinous criminals which is denied to ordinary citizens?

[Blaster_Master]

I believe that the right to life also endows the right to end it. So, I think suicide should be legal and assisted suicide should also be legal. However, I don’t think our moral obligations end there. There should be some requirement for counseling before the service because, as mentioned in the other thread, a lot of healthy suicides are typically sudden choices and if given the help through that short period probably won’t still want to die. How should we address additional legal issues regarding things like the will and assets, outstanding debts, insurance coverage, etc?

[Peremensoe]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

suicidee (?)

“Suicide.”

Or “would-be suicide,” before the fact.

[Boyo_Jim]

@Peremensoe

Wouldn’t it be kind of crazy to offer a freedom and service to heinous criminals which is denied to ordinary citizens?

Possibly, but it’s a much easier political sell. It costs a shitload of money to keep a prisoner boxed up, all paid by our tax dollars. A healthy productive person dying is at least theoretically a loss to both society and the economy. A prisoner is neither.

[Clothahump]

@Revtim

Unstigmatized and assisted, absolutely. Encouraged? That makes me uncomfortable. Maybe if I were to hear the cases you had in mind.

I was thinking along the lines of the terminally ill. I hadn’t considered death row inmates or life-without-parole inmates, but that would work as well.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Peremensoe

Wouldn’t it be kind of crazy to offer a freedom and service to heinous criminals which is denied to ordinary citizens?

Like nutrition, shelter and medical care?

[Peremensoe]

@Blaster_Master

There should be some requirement for counseling before the service because, as mentioned in the other thread, a lot of healthy suicides are typically sudden choices and if given the help through that short period probably won’t still want to die. How should we address additional legal issues regarding things like the will and assets, outstanding debts, insurance coverage, etc?

Some kind of counseling stage is reasonable, as is a supported putting-affairs-in-order one. But keep in mind that if either is perceived as too onerous, then people will be encouraged to just skip it and throw themselves in front of trains again (or whatever messy, unsanctioned alternative occurs to them).

[Peremensoe]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Like nutrition, shelter and medical care?

Well, yes. Civilized countries should ensure that all their citizens receive some minimum standard of these.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

I find it illogical that one should oppose the death penalty on any sort of ethical ground (rather than because there’s a chance an innocent man may be executed) and supporting state-sanctioned suicide. A serial killer could live out his natural life while a man who is depressed will see a very simple way out of life via suicide.

Anyhow I oppose not only any actual state support for suicide, but any sort of societal toleration of suicide, period. Western civilization has tried to practise and has been relatively successful at having a consistent life ethic-applying not just to regular murder, but also to wars, the death penalty, suicide, and infanticide and this has led to a society where individual human lives are more valued than anywhere or anytime else.

[Boyo_Jim]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

I find it illogical that one should oppose the death penalty on any sort of ethical ground (rather than because there’s a chance an innocent man may be executed) and supporting state-sanctioned suicide. A serial killer could live out his natural life while a man who is depressed will see a very simple way out of life via suicide.

Anyhow I oppose not only any actual state support for suicide, but any sort of societal toleration of suicide, period. Western civilization has tried to practise and has been relatively successful at having a consistent life ethic-applying not just to regular murder, but also to wars, the death penalty, suicide, and infanticide and this has led to a society where individual human lives are more valued than anywhere or anytime else.

There is simply no connection whatsoever between the two. You need to upgrade your logic chip. Perhaps you haven’t realized, but every single person in the history of the world has died, and odds are this will continue for the indefinite future. One should have some say as to when and under what conditions to die. Execution is state sanctioned murder for vengeance. I find it astounding that you cannot see a moral or ethical distinction.

[BrainGlutton]

Toward the end of the year 1920 the government of the United States had practically completed the programme adopted during the last months of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labor questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent., and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defense. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army, under the parental eye of the general staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to three hundred thousand men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was a necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous. Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved, and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished, and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks, which proved a godsend to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of national self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by the former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves, and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world, which, after all, is a world by itself.

But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium writhed in the throes of anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one.

<snip>

It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The block, which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings, used as cafes and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by the government in the winter of 1913. The French and Italian cafes and restaurants were torn down; the whole block enclosed by a gilded iron railing, and converted into a lovely garden, with lawns, flowers, and fountains. In the centre of the garden stood a small, white building, severely classical in architecture, and surrounded by thickets of flowers. Six Ionic columns supported the roof, and the single door was of bronze. A splendid marble group of “the Fates” stood before the door, the work of a young American sculptor, Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years old.

<snip>

The Governor was finishing his reply to the short speech of the Surgeon-General. I heard him say: “The laws prohibiting suicide and providing punishment for any attempt at self-destruction have been repealed. The government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man to end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through physical suffering or mental despair. It is believed that the community will be benefited by the removal of such people from their midst. Since the passage of this law, the number of suicides in the United States has not increased. Now that the government has determined to establish a Lethal Chamber in every city, town, and village in the country, it remains to be seen whether or not that class of humans creatures from whose desponding ranks new victims of self-destruction fall daily will accept the relief thus provided.” He paused, and turned to the white Lethal Chamber. The silence in the street was absolute. “There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome, let him seek it here.” Then, quickly turning to the military aid of the President’s household, he said, “I declare the Lethal Chamber open”; and again facing the vast crowd, he cried in a clear voice: “Citizens of New York and of the United States of America, through me the government declares the Lethal Chamber to be open.”

– “The Repairer of Reputations,” Robert W. Chambers (1895)

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Boyo_Jim

There is simply no connection whatsoever between the two. You need to upgrade your logic chip. Perhaps you haven’t realized, but every single person in the history of the world has died, and odds are this will continue for the indefinite future.

This doesn’t mean humans should speed up death, because it is natural.

One should have some say as to when and under what conditions to die.

We’re talking about people here who are depressed-not those who are in a vegetative state or even those are terminally ill. And it will be easier for depressed people to commit suicide if seemingly society encouraging suicide if you want and if there’s a very painless and easy way out.

Execution is state sanctioned murder for vengeance. I find it astounding that you cannot see a moral or ethical distinction.

Actually I do see a distinction. Capital punishment is in theory quite moral and just to me even if I oppose it in practice, suicide is not.

[Peremensoe]

Qin: What business is it of yours when and how other people wish to die?

[Boyo_Jim]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

…We’re talking about people here who are depressed-not those who are in a vegetative state or even those are terminally ill. And it will be easier for depressed people to commit suicide if seemingly society encouraging suicide if you want and if there’s a very painless and easy way out…

Your post said flat out that suicide is wrong and shouldn’t be tolerated, not just suicide by the depressed. In fact the OP said in a later post that he had thought of the idea in relation to the terminally ill, not the momentarily or chronically depressed. In fact, just about all the comments here (except yours) seem to imply or say outright that assisted suicide should be legal, with some built in safeguards to prevent a depressed person from acting on a… whim, more or less.

Regardless, there is no logical connection between suicide and state approved executions, that is unless the criminal volunteers for it.