Tom Flynn takes issue with Jennifer Michael Hecht’s view of suicide in her latest book, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. Her view is what the title indicates: you’re not allowed to.
Tom admires her writing, but remains unconvinced.
Make no mistake, Stay is compellingly written—I don’t think Hecht is capable of writing other than marvelously—so why couldn’t her book change my views? Stay has multiple difficulties, but its fatal problem is straightforward: while many naturalistic thinkers have offered arguments against suicide, and Hecht marshals them skillfully—who knew that apostle of liberty, John Stuart Mill, thought people lacked the right to end their lives?—the most powerful naturalistic arguments about suicide uphold its licitness. Period. Candidly, Humean self-ownership alone is almost impossible to trump.
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know what the arguments are, but I can think of some exceptions to Humean self-ownership on this point – or maybe it’s not some but just one. I think parents of young children should bend every nerve to at least postpone suicide. Parents of young children don’t really own themselves fully – which is why some people don’t want to be parents; it’s why it can be so hard even for people who do want to be parents; it’s why abortion rights are so fundamental.
Tom goes on to argue that there is no genuine naturalistic argument against suicide. I’m not so sure. I think suicides have ripple effects on the people who knew or even knew of the suicider, and that those effects can be added up to a naturalistic argument against suicide. It may not be a conclusive argument, but I think there are things that can be said.
Hmm. The decision to suicide is made on entirely subjective grounds, by people who are NOT in the position to exercise their best judgment.
I think that objection makes Assisted Dying MORE legitimate, as the decision there involves medical information and consultation with others.
Telling suicidal people to “stay,” and that they have a responsible not to kill themselves is as about as abhorrent to me as telling women not to get raped. Suicide isn’t something that you choose to do, it’s something that happens when the weight of your feelings destroy you. People don’t “commit” suicide, they become victims of it. You might as well shame people for having cancer because it bums everyone else out.
I think Hecht is so distraught by the phenomenon of suicide, that she’ll use any and every shitty argument in order to persuade people to remain alive and feel quite like a hero for doing so. She seems totally indifferent to the experiences of suicidal people and only concerned with the effects of their suicide.
“Hmm. The decision to suicide is made on entirely subjective grounds, by people who are NOT in the position to exercise their best judgment.”
That’s the same rational for insisting women wait 72 hours before they have an abortion, because they CLEARLY AREN’T THINKING STRAIGHT, unlike us men who TRULY know what’s best for them.
I would say that because suicide is so taboo, because everyone’s impulse is to try to prevent people they know from killing themselves, that the “ripple effects” costs of suicide are greatly overestimated. Other decisions people make (including the decision not to commit suicide) also have ripple effects and yet people are understood to have the right to make them.
I think suicides have ripple effects on the people who knew or even knew of the suicider, and that those effects can be added up to a naturalistic argument against suicide.
The ripple effect argument is interesting but it amounts to saying that the desires of the friends and people who knew the suicider should trump the suicider’s own desires. Or you wind up rejecting the suicider’s agency and place them in the catch-22 where they can’t commit suicide because they’re not in their right mind and we can tell they’re not in their right mind because they want to commit suicide.
If we follow the argument that the ripple effect among those who knew the suicider should argue against their choice to suicide, we must deny the “death with dignity” movement because it’s not possible that all the friends and acquaintances of the suicider will be in agreement with the choice. Take Terry Pratchett as an example: do we deny him his right to die in a time and place of his own choosing because, what, his fans will be upset? If you stretch that reasoning far enough you’re treading on the secular arguments against abortion: it makes third parties unhappy. In order to give anyone the ability to make choices we have to acknowledge that other people may not like that choice and it’s their problem, not the chooser’s. The chooser would argue that they’d rather their friends didn’t get upset at all.
With respect to parents of young children, I think that’s an appeal to an emotional cheap shot. You could have just as well said “anyone in a position of deep responsibility.” If the captain of a sinking ship chooses to suicide before trying to help coordinate the safe evacuation of the passengers, we’d think they were – literally – irresponsible. If they choose to go down with the ship afterwards, we might think they were somewhere on the stupid, but cool, spectrum. We wouldn’t approve of an airline pilot who decided to suicide while 400 passengers in a 747 depended on them for a safe landing, either. I’d argue that anyone in a position of critical responsibility does not get that responsibility completely waived upon their suicide – and that takes care of the “parents with kids” issue, as well.
PS – I noticed I wrote “commit suicide” a few times and otherwise “suicide”; I’m in the middle of adjusting my vocabulary regarding the issue of choosing to die.
@Andrew B
That’s the same rational for insisting women wait 72 hours before they have an abortion, because they CLEARLY AREN’T THINKING STRAIGHT, unlike us men who TRULY know what’s best for them.
No it isnt the same – We do know that people commit suicide for irrational reasons – Do you really want a jilted teenager to carry out the suicide or receive some counseling? There are perfectly valid,secular reasons to counsel against suicide – there are none for abortions. Suicide should be an option for people of sound mind (but therein lies the rub – the act of wanting to commit suicide should not disqualify a person).
Marcus @ 5 – well no, I don’t think it does amount to saying that the desires of the friends and people who knew the suicider should trump the suicider’s own desires; not the way I put it. I said only that it’s part of the picture. I don’t in fact think the desires of the friends et al. should trump, but I do think they should – morally – be considered.
Basically I was just saying there are naturalistic reasons to oppose suicide and that it’s not just a religious hangover. I wasn’t necessarily endorsing the naturalistic reasons.
From Flynn’s article:
“Hecht’s Future-Self Contention
Hecht notes that many who attempt suicide go on to lead full lives; some express relief that their previous attempts at self-annihilation failed. From this she concludes that anyone considering suicide should think again, out of respect for the potential desires of his or her potential future self.”
The same argument is made when trying to deny women the right to an abortion: years from now, wouldn’t your child be happy you didn’t murder him/her when he/she was still in your womb? It’s a terrible argument. It portrays the rights of the future self as having more weight than the present self in the same way that abortion opponents try to argue that the future child of a pregnant women has more rights than the women herself.
I really see self-ownership as the trump card. It’s the reason I’ve take the “Abortion on-demand and without apology” stance as well.
“Do you really want a jilted teenager to carry out the suicide or receive some counseling?”
I want her to make that decision for herself.
Ah, no, now there I do disagree. Teenagers don’t have fully developed brains yet; their impulse control is unfinished. There are excellent naturalistic reasons for not giving them full autonomy in everything.
There are perfectly valid,secular reasons to counsel against suicide – there are none for abortions
I am concerned that the “upset circle of friends” argument might work regarding abortions. You know, “the family was so looking forward to grandkids…” “we were so happy to hear you were pregnant!” and that kind of thing.
The issue, to me, is what responsibility an individual accepts for others’ feelings. If we’re willing to cast the problem in terms of responsibilities (as I implied @#5) then we have a pretty workable framework, because responsibility is something we accept rather than something that is foisted upon us. I do not accept responsibility for Ophelia’s feelings about this comment, for example. I accept responsibility for my actions when I get behind the wheel of a car. If I have a child, I am accepting the responsibility that comes with the child. If I am a writer and I have an army of fans, I do not accept responsiblity for their feelings or to continue writing whatever books my fan-base expects. If I get a pilot’s license and accept a job flying 747s I am accepting responsibility for getting my passengers from Point A to Point B on time and with only severe crampage from the tiny amount of leg-room. Etc.
This is something I’ve had to think about a fair amount, lately, since I was dealing with someone in my life who implied that I had responsibility for their feelings, which included being civil on the telephone if they called me and woke me up at 3am. I finally told them that at no time had I indicated I felt it was my responsibility to always be there for them when they wanted an ear to bend and, if they kept it up, I was going to stop talking to them entirely. The point is: there are some people who will assume that you have a greater responsibility to them, than you were willing to accept. This is directly and critically relevant to the question of choosing to die. What is the responsibility the individual accepted for others’ feelings?
I do think they should – morally – be considered.
I’m sorry if I mis-characterized what you were saying. I wasn’t really arguing with you, I was arguing against a more extreme version of that position (which does concern me).
In fact, I agree with you, and I’d cast that moral consideration in terms of responsibility accepted. If I were married, I’d feel that I had some responsibility to my spouse not to surprise them by choosing to die without mentioning it or saying goodbye. Etc.
“Ah, no, now there I do disagree. Teenagers don’t have fully developed brains yet; their impulse control is unfinished. There are excellent naturalistic reasons for not giving them full autonomy in everything.”
So wouldn’t you support parental consent forms for teenage girls who want to have an abortion?
BTW – if you haven’t seen Terry Pratchett’s documentary on “Choosing to Die”, I can’t recommend it enough.
There is an amazing moment where the wife of a man who is incurable pain and wants to die says, in effect, “I’d rather he didn’t, but I respect his wishes.” I went through half a box of kleenex on it. It’s interesting and timely and beautiful and upsetting.
@Andrew B.
cant drink , cant smoke but life -ending decisions , sure!
here’s one more example – Post pregnancy , a number of women suffer depression , due to hormonal and other life changes , the stress of having a new kid etc. Most are able to overcome it with friends, family, counselling. I do not think a person in the midst of temporary hormonal changes is able to judge for herself , whether she can or cannot commit suicide. I’d say in this case , there has to be a time duration , during which one cannot make a suicide call .
Candidly, Humean self-ownership alone is almost impossible to trump.
Bullshit. Most decisions to commit suicide are made by people in the throes of either huge emotional distress or mental illness; and that, combined with the irreversibility of that particular choice, and the magnitude of the stakes, is more-than-sufficient reason to assume (as a default) that such decisions are not being made responsibly or rationally, and to counter them by reasonable means whenever possible. IF you wrongly assume that someone would not really want to die, then the worst-case scenario is that you keep someone alive who wants to die, and that person might try again to kill himself later. But if you wrongly assume that someone really wants to die, and is making a rational choice to do so, then your worst-case scenario is that you let someone die who could easily have wanted to live if given more time to reconsider. Which of those two mistakes would you want to have on your conscience?
Andrew, are you completely denying the existence of depression and mental disorders?
@dshetty
Ok, yeah, you’re right. I got a bit carried away. I apologize. But Hecht’s argument basically paints all those considering suicide as the equivalent of a perpetually hormonally teenager who just can’t trusted to act rationally. That bothers me.
The same argument is made when trying to deny women the right to an abortion…
The difference is that a person who chooses to kill him/herself is a full person, while a fetus is not. An argument can be valid in one instance, and not valid in a totally different instance. (Yes, a fetus could have grown into a full person who leads a full life, but the same can be said of every unfertilized egg-cell in a woman’s ovaries. (All together now: “Every sperm is sacred…”))
I feel there are two sorts of suicide – the rational, measured choice (of, say, an elderly person with a terribly painful, incurable illness that would eventually kill her/him), and the product of mental illness (depression, etc.)
Who can trump the first individual’s decision?? S/He has made a careful and carefully-thought-out decision, for very defensible reasons, which should be her/his right to make (see “agency”). There was a Richard Dreyfuss movie back in the day where he plays a paralyzed man fighting for the right to end his life, for example. “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?”, maybe?
In the second case, it’s no more under the individual’s control than a sneeze or vomiting when one is seriously ill. It’s a symptom of their disorder, and they are no more to blame or guilty or responsible than the person who sneezes. Go ahead, try to talk someone out of sneezing. See if you can pressure them into a promise to never sneeze again. Because they should be able to exert conscious control over EVERY impulse, right? While you’re at it, explain to someone with OCD that they really don’t need to indulge in all that ritualistic habit, because, you know, they should be able to think it through and thereby be able to override those compulsions.
And then we can all have a great big “blame the victim” party.
@doublereed
Not at all, considering I’ve been dealing with depression for roughly 18 years. What I take issue with is the idea that depression NECESSARILY results in irrational decision-making.
@17 Raging Bee, it’s not your responsibility. If one is in a position to intervene in a mentall ilness suicide situation, then that’s like jumping in to pull a drowning swimmer to safety or like rushing to a car crash to help the passengers get out. There’s no real difference here.
But if you are attempting to stop a reasoned, carefully made decision to end one’s life (terminal extremely painful illness scenario), then, yeah. You need to respect that person’s wishes. And respect that person’s choices.
I realize this puts you in a difficult position, because you may not be always in a position to be able to discern which is which, so you will naturally err on the side of caution. The person who has made a rational decision to end his/her life will make sure you are kept out of the way after your first intervention, consistent with a rational person’s agency and decision-making processes.
In the end, no one who commits suicide should ever be blamed or condemned. That’s just plain wrong. They couldn’t help it.
“that’s like jumping in to pull a drowning swimmer to safety”
That said, no onlooker is required to jump in to rescue. Those who see the person drowning but do not jump in shouldn’t be condemned, either. They may have heart conditions. Or be unable to swim! Or simply consider the risks to themselves too great. So no, NOT rescuing someone when they saw that person needing rescuing shouldn’t weigh on THEIR consciences, either. Other people’s welfare isn’t solely YOUR responsibility, and if you are harboring a delusion that your job is to fix the world, you’re just going to end up causing yourself all sorts of unnecessary suffering.
@Raging Bee
I don’t see how that’s an objection. (But maybe I’m misunderstanding you?) A fetus would eventually (usually) become a full person, in the same way that (in Hecht’s mind) a suicidal person would (usually) become capable a person capable of happiness. I see Hecht’s argument also being used to deny women agency because of what “might” happen at some point in the future.
Women considering abortions might feel differently after they’ve given birth and spent years with their child in the same way that someone considering suicide might feel differently years later. I don’t consider either good arguments.
There’s a wonderful letter here written by Stephen Fry to a young person suffering from depression who wrote him a letter in desperation. I hope it helps fill in the landscape surrounding the pinpoint issue of suicide a bit: http://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/6918814422_f3942a23d8_o.png
@25 Andrew, there’s also the side of the anti-abortion argument that the fetus who might otherwise have been aborted will likely become a full person, but may well become a terrible person. There are people who have committed unspeakable crimes whose parents have expressed the wish that the criminals had never been born, after all. This is one of the risks of re-using a family name, in fact – no one imagines this sweet little baby might grow up to be a menace to society, but it DOES happen.
Those who hold out a shiny potential future as motivation to do what they wish never share the fact that the future is not only shiny and appealing. Many futures are quite horrible things…
This is one of the risks of re-using a family name, in fact – no one imagines this sweet little baby might grow up to be a menace to society, but it DOES happen. And then every member of the family with that name has to go through the hassle of being mistaken for a criminal with every driver’s license renewal, traffic stop, etc. etc.
I’m with Andrew B & others who say that there’s a right to kill yourself if there’s a right to self-ownership.
Certainly, those who may not understand what they’re doing should get the help they need. But that’s really a different question.
The central core of a right to die is whether I, being of sound mind, get to control what happens to me.
The answer to that has to be yes because it’s the only answer anyone accepts for themselves.
27
“Those who hold out a shiny potential future as motivation to do what they wish never share the fact that the future is not only shiny and appealing. Many futures are quite horrible things…”
Yes, that’s the “the Sun will come out tomorrow” argument I hear often. It’s just assumed that “things must necessarily get better” eventually because “time heals all wounds.” But they don’t always get better. Not everyone gets a happy ending.
@Andrew B
I got a bit carried away. I apologize.
No worries – i doubt most of the readers here agree with the article anyway .
I’ve been dealing with depression for roughly 18 years
All the best.
@29 quixote
The central core of a right to die is whether I, being of sound mind, get to control what happens to me.The answer to that has to be yes
Yes -but you bypass the issue that makes this argument complicated – “sound mind”
@Raging Bee #17:
“Responsible” suggests the imposition of a normative (and quite possibly unjustified) value set, and I should think we all know the problems of insisting that decisions governing oneself be entirely rational. Your parents, as the people who chose to force you to exist without any possibility that you could have any input on the decision, are the only people who owe you a continued existence, and only to the point where you are able to care for yourself. Everything else is you (and I mean both a general hypothetical “you” and you, Raging Bee, specifically, since you’re arguing against a right to suicide) demanding that other people suffer (perhaps only temporarily or sporadically, perhaps not) for the sake of your comfort. Nope. That’s exploitation, a particularly vicious form. Especially people with mental illnesses that make life miserable (and especially especially on an ongoing basis – there are treatments for depression, for example, but few to no people are ever truly cured) should be able to opt to not have to continue to suffer. Why is psychogenic pain somehow less legitimate a reason to end one’s life than physiologic pain? I promise both of them heavily impact decision-making.
Also, all choices are irreversible – that’s how a linear perception of time works. The impacts of some choices can be altered to greater degrees than others, but you can never actually undo something, only alter the outcome.
The first mistake would weigh on my conscience, the second one not: I believe people, even mentally ill people, have a near-absolute (again, not entirely true for those who compel others to exist in the first place) right to bodily autonomy. In the first case, I would have forced someone to suffer pointlessly – they wind up dead at a slightly later point in time, also of their own volition (unless they die some other way first). I would feel good about my decision to let someone choose to die, becasue I have no desire to compel people who are suffering and wish to no longer exist to continue to exist. In the second case, I’d never be able to know it was a mistake – the person would be dead and would not have a later where they could be happy, though that’s not actually my primary reason for not objecting to the second case.
I agree with Ophelia that the impacts on one’s friends and loved ones should factor into the decision to kill oneself or not, and that people who opt to procreate owe it to their offspring to try to stick around to care for them until they can care for themselves. Ultimately, I don’t think any of these factors matters more than a lifetime of suffering, and perhaps not even more than a year of suffering, or minutes. That’s not my decision – the person in question is the only one in a position to weigh the options, and dismissing zir right to self-determination on the basis that zir brain is not working in the same way as yours (or within a particular defined range of acceptable ways for brains to work) is an unjustifiably paternalistic act.
Forgive me for not reading the entire thread first. Normally I don’t comment, but this discussion is somehow fairly personal for me. This business of trying to noodle out the morality of suicide in a framework of “rights” seems unlikely to result in any sort of useful moral clarity. It reminds me of the standard libertarian argument: “no one has a right to coerce another human to do anything” (sounds reasonable enough, if you don’t think too hard for counterexamples), ergo I can’t prevent you from owning a machine gun because that would be coercive. That’s just a shitty way to frame a political philosophy. The world is just… more complicated than that.
When I was twelve, I got to watch my mom try to kill herself. (Thankfully, she survived, but it was close.) In the 16 years between then and now, I’m still affected by that experience and its aftermath. The ripple effects can last a long time. They would have been much worse if she had actually succeeded. I reject out of hand this idea that somehow the police and paramedics should have allowed her to die on account of “bodily autonomy.”
John Horstman, @33, has a clever loophole for the “parent problem,” that somehow seems to miss the point:
By this logic, presumably one parent is allowed to kill themselves then? And realistically speaking, the children of suiciders (at least in the US) would be cared for either by family members or the foster system, which, while far from optimal, won’t result in the children starving to death in either case. At least in my own experience, and I think in the experience of a lot of other people, the damage to children is far more emotional than logistical. This isn’t the loophole that’s going to get you out of solving the parent problem if you want to frame this discussion in terms of “rights.”
The right to bodily autonomy is a useful rule of thumb, that works most of the time for sorting out issues in everyday experience. It’s widely applicable enough that it makes some sense to use the word “right.” It’s a great argument for why women should have access to abortion. It’s even a great argument for assisted dying. But it’s not magic. Just because we attached the word “right” to it as some sort of approximation doesn’t mean that it’s universally applicable. In engineering terms, it fails in edge cases. I don’t have a forumula for when we should let people kill themselves. In some cases, they should obviously be allowed to. A lot of cases are a lot more complicated–what if I’m really drunk and I want to kill myself? Do the police stop me? I’ve struggled with depression for my whole life–and most of the time I don’t want to kill myself. A couple times a year I contemplate suicide. Present me is pretty glad that past me wasn’t allowed to kill myself, but maybe future me won’t feel the same way? It’s a deeply personal and thorny and complicated moral problem that I don’t know how to sort out in general. But saying “bodily autonomy” as if it gets you out of thinking about the complexities of the situation is just lazy.
I’m troubled by any moral argument that relies on the concept of ownership, mainly because I don’t see that concept as axiomatic.
—
[possibly inappropriate levity]
I quite dislike certain locutions… doesn’t it seem odd to write that someone “performed” suicide or that someone “committed” fellatio?
Why must an illness be terminal for suicide to be justified?
I fully intend to take my own life, but the illness that leads me to this decision is not terminal. It is, and has been for over thirty years, painful, disabling and isolating.
Must I be examined for mental illness before I make the decision to take my own life? How ill must I be and how much pain must I endure before I get to take full charge of my future? If I don’t get to make those decisions, who will?
Stella @36, so long as it’s a deliberate and fully informed decision, I support you 100%.
FWIW.
It is, and has been for over thirty years, painful, disabling and isolating.
Which is also a pretty good description of serious depression.
John Morales @37
I work at staying informed. I work at assessing my mental state, stress level and mood. I have a pact with myself to keep this decision as rational as possible and not to act unless and until I have exhausted all reasonable treatment options.
I’d like more people to understand that death is not always the worst thing that can happen to a person.
Randomfactor @39
I’m not sure what you are saying. As relates to depression, that description is close to metaphor for me; as relates to my daily, lived, physical experience, it isn’t metaphor at all. I personally still have more options for controlling depression than I have for controlling physical pain and paralysis.
Complicated subject. I disagree with John Morales, in that I do see self-ownership as axiomatic: who should have the power to determine for me, if not myself, and why?
But I agree with Ophelia and Raging Bee that self determination is circumscribed in children, the mentally disabled, and some cases of mental illness. My interpretation is that their rights are still absolute, but their ability to exercise those rights is compromised. That may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it has the practical consequence that I am the trustee of my children’s rights, not their owner. As such, I have a fiduciary responsibility to exercise their rights in their own self interest, as best I can, and not in my own interest. It also means that I’m required to hand over autonomy to my children to the extent they’re capable of taking it over from me, their trustee. (There are other caveats such as “my house, my rules,” but that’s a different discussion.)
How does that apply to suicide? I agree with Ophelia that if in my judgment my children are acting under impaired judgment, then as their trustee I’m obligated to intervene. I also agree with Raging Bee that if my neighbor’s judgment is impaired, then it’s appropriate to intervene. Bee might justify it on different grounds (involving “society” as an interested party with rights and powers of its own). Here I agree with Blanche that it’s analogous to saving someone from drowning or an accident. And it’s complicated further because I generally agree with Blanche that unlike a parent-child relationship, there is often no positive duty to act: I can, and should, try to help my neighbor, but generally I can’t, and shouldn’t, be punished for failing to do so. It’s also complicated by the risk of intervening: if the neighbor is NOT impaired, then intervening is a violation of my neighbor’s rights, if not an outright crime.
Which is where some comments on this thread, including Bee’s, worry me. There are those who would say that suicide is by definition irrational (or “insane”), and therefore intervention is always justified, because the attempt itself is sufficient evidence of impaired judgment. That’s NOT what Bee said, but I think the risk is high that similar thinking will come into play. If I am the judge whether your suicide is rational or not, then I’m very likely to judge you “impaired” on the grounds you disagree with me. This is a highly subjective decision, so how do we distinguish “rational” from “irrational” subjectivity?
I am a volunteer suicide prevention trainer and as part of that I do regular interventions to prevent suicide. While i don’t agree with the county I work for’s goal of 0 suicides because people do have the right to choose to die when they wish to, I also am very committed to preventing suicide. I know this seems contradictory but there is a good reason for it. I’ll go into that later though. I just got some of the data from the violent death report for my state. We have the 13th highest suicide rate in the country, we have death with dignity and those that chose that road don’t factor into the figures.
The preliminary data for 2013 shows 28 suicides in the 10-17yr old population, in 2001 that number was 11. As was mentioned earlier this is a population whose brain hasn’t finished developing, that increase is something that makes me want to know why it’s gone up. The Oregon student wellness survey showed 5.2% of 6th graders, 8% of 8th graders and 6% of 11th graders surveyed that year (I don’t have the year of the report in front of me, I believe it was the 2012 one though.) attempted suicide. The same population that had 28 completed suicides in 2013. There is a striking difference there in completed suicides.
Youth are far from the top of the list in suicides however, white males over 65 have the highest rates. The next highest is the 45-64 year old male cohort. Why is this? There are a variety of reasons but the data I’ve seen shows that approximately 4x more males complete their suicide, while 3x more females attempt suicide.* There are a variety of reasons for these figures, some of the proposed reasons are horribly sexist (women chose less lethal means because they don’t want to leave a mess for example) but the reality is that 71.4% of male suicide attempts use a firearm. (I wish the seas for women were reported but again, can’t find it) That number is striking, and shows a determination to finish the suicide. It also shows why the figures for men are so high.
Enough with the data for now, I could go on for days with that stuff but moving on. Why do suicide prevention if I think people have the right to chose when and how they die? I do it because I think it matters. There are so many reasons people come to the conclusion that suicide is their only option and for many people they remain ambivalent on if they actually want to die until the moment of death. We know this from asking people who have attempted suicide.
The ultimate decision is down to the individual, the choice is theirs. The ones I want to reach are those people that aren’t sure, that are ambivalent. Those are the people that have decided to die because they see no other way out of their situation. My goal with an intervention is to show that there are options, there are ways out of the situation, be it via needing councling, a halfway house, a domestic abuse shelter, etc. there are options. If the person has actually chosen to die because this is the place that their life is going to end, that is okay with me. It is ultimately, their choice. I just want to provide the options for the people that have come to suicide because they can’t see another way out.
The reasons for doing suicide prevention work need not have anything to do with religion, they don’t need to remove a persons autonomy. I do this work because I’ve been there, I hit that low and felt like there were no other options. The pain, the inability to do the things I’d been doing 6mo before, the depression, the loneliness, all of it contributed to hitting that point. Did I really want to die? Not sure. I had so few options available to me that it just seemed that was the only way to escape the pain I was in. I needed to know there were other options, I also needed to know that it was my choice. I didn’t attempt it because, despite having the means to easily die, I found that I could push through because I knew I had that choice available.
I don’t aim to take away someone’s choice by doing an intervention, I am to make sure that they know the options they have and then give them the choice of their path. If it leads to death at least I know they chose that with open eyes.
As to the ripple effect, it does exist and does have an impact. The suicide of a parent raises the risk of suicide in their children (I can’t find the numbers for how much that is raised right now). The impact a suicide has is something we need to be aware of. Why? So we can do bereavement support. Support groups for those impacted by suicide help reduce the risk of suicide in the families of someone that has committed suicide. I’m all about risk reduction and this is a relatively simple way to reduce that risk. Most counties have bereavement groups available with a trained volunteer to help facilitate them. When I do an intervention that information is another thing I leave. Why? Because if the person does chose to die then I want their family to have that information.
This stuff is really important, I have no desire to bring the suicide rate down to 0, that would for sure take away peoples right to chose if they live or not but I do want educate people that it’s okay to ask if someone is thinking about suicide, that it’s okay to offer them the information for councilors, support groups and the like. I want people to know that there are options, and the more people that know that the better. People also need to know that death is also one of those options and it’s an individuals choice to die, even if those around them don’t understand why.
*I really dislike the reporting on this since it erases non-binary people and trans people from the data. I can’t find good data but I am trying, the only thing that even looks at it is the trans discrimination survey
If I am the judge whether your suicide is rational or not, then I’m very likely to judge you “impaired” on the grounds you disagree with me. This is a highly subjective decision, so how do we distinguish “rational” from “irrational” subjectivity?
We don’t necessarily have to do so. We should simply state that while you may have a right to end your own life, no one else is obligated to facilitate or enforce such a right. We, as individuals and as a society, should err on the side of caution when dealing with a potential suicide, and take reasonable measures to stop it from happening, and make suicidal people aware of other options they may have, as Lee delay regularly does. And those who really want to end their lives, despite all previous interventions, will most likely be able to do so eventually anyway. So it’s not like we’re permanently taking away anyone’s right to make this choice.
On a broader note, who the hell came up with this phrase “self-ownership?” Whatever happened to “inalienable rights?” What does “self-ownership” cover that “inalienable rights” doesn’t? The idea that a “self” is a thing that can be “owned,” a piece of property separate from the person owning it, is something I find deeply suspicious. If the “self” is a thing that can be “owned,” that kinda leads to the idea that it can be owned by someone else, if the law and/or the right amount of money allows it. Can anyone explain why we can’t just scrap that fishy-sounding (and worse-smelling) phrase and stick with “inalienable rights” instead?
The concept of inalienable rights is EXTREMELY important, here and in all other issues, because it means, not only that no one can take your rights away, but also that you can’t give them away either. You can choose not to exercise a right, of course, but you can’t make a binding promise not to do so — the courts simply won’t enforce any such contract.
In the case of suicide, “inalienable rights” means you have an inalienable right to live, and no one can take away that right without VERY good cause; and it also means you can’t give it away yourself — no one will enable you to do it, no court will enforce it, so if you really want to give up your right to live, you have to do it without anyone’s help.
@Raging Bee:
Those are excellent points. Thank you!
Yeah, I definitely get this.
There’s a converse that shouldn’t be overlooked as well: if the justification of bodily autonomy is described in terms of “self-ownership,” which implicitly defines one’s body as one’s property, then this also implies acceptance of the concept of property rights in general. I.e., if I can’t take control of your body because “property,” then I similarly can’t take control of your house, your car, or your iPod, and all for the common reason that they belong to you.
That said, I admit that this terminology lends itself to simplified ways of discussing law. “It’s my body” explicitly denotes ownership, which connotes property, but nevertheless “it’s my body” is a powerful argument. Who else’s body is it? And given that, what gives me the right to make decisions about yours? I agree with you that this language has a gigantic shadow side, but sometimes I find myself reaching for it anyway.
@Raging Bee again, slightly OT:
Back in my pro-death-penalty days, I would have said that this right can never be taken away: it can only be given up by the individual. And (drum roll) by taking another life, or attempting to, one has performatively waived their right to life, among other things by demonstrating their disbelief in this right.
I still half believe that, in the sense that I might accept the death penalty for murder, or lethal force in self-defense, *IF* we had assurance that this could be applied more or less infallibly. Perhaps I could be persuaded to reject any capital punishment on purely moral grounds, but the question is moot because that issue is completely eclipsed by the fact of false convictions, selective application of justice, racism and sexism in the justice system, and so on. Since I have little confidence that the right people are on death row, there’s not much point worrying whether it would be OK to execute the “right” people.
But in any case, I do my damndest to recognize rights as absolutely absolute, because I really, really distrust our ability to violate them only for “good reasons.” We may be forced to do that in practice, but we had better hedge that about with some genuine humility, and some serious consequences for getting it wrong.
if the justification of bodily autonomy is described in terms of “self-ownership,” which implicitly defines one’s body as one’s property…
Another HUGE problem with the “body as property” argument is that our bodies aren’t separate objects like cars or cell-phones, they’re integral and inseparable parts of our very beings. A body isn’t just something you “own” or “possess” (or choose not to possess), it’s part of what you ARE. Ever meet a person who didn’t own a body, or a “self?” That makes your body so far different from any other property you’re ever likely to own, that calling it “property” just sounds like a gross misuse of the word.
Also, I share your ambivalence about the death penalty. I believe that people who commit certain violent crimes deserve to die, but enacting such beliefs as policy brings real and complex problems that very often outweigh the usefulness of killing people who “deserve” to die.
dshetty @32, Saying “being of sound mind” isn’t skirting the issue, the way I see it. It moves the focus to the real question: does the person involved really know what they’re planning. Lee Delay’s comment @42 is very interesting for the same reason. That’s someone who deals with the issue in the real world and says the same thing more effectively.
You have a right to die if you have a right to control your own body. If you want to take away that control, you’re in minefield that ends in no rights for anyone.
As far as the right to die goes, that has to be in a context where enough help is available for people in despair or depression and they can decide whether they want that help. As Lee Delay says.
I suspect that there is something wrong with the very concept of “self-ownership”. It might be a kind of oxymoron. I vaguely remember reading something by Immanuel Kant saying that the very idea of owning oneself is silly. A person cannot own him/her self. Things are owned. Things have a price. Persons cannot be “owned” because they do not have a “price”; rather, they have “dignity”. Blah Blah Blah. I think he said something like: one can be one’s own master, but one cannot own oneself. It is hard (at least for me) to get one’s head around the idea that one cannot own oneself. After all, if you do not own yourself, then someone else must… right? But no. Ownership is just a category that does not apply to persons. (Perhaps in the same way that smell is just not a category that applies to light. I think). *P.S.: I know that Kant was against suicide. And I’m not saying that I agree with that position. I’m just suggesting that we need to think about this issue using more than just “ownership” as a category of reference.
does the person involved really know what they’re planning.
But no one else can determine this – so if someone does want to commit suicide , how do we know? If we need them to undergo some test or counselling for e.g. (even if its neutral , even if it makes no attempt to dissuade them , even if its purely for evaluating their soundness of mind) then I believe it would still not be acceptable to some e.g. @33
@Stella
Why must an illness be terminal for suicide to be justified?
Agreed. A person can determine when their life is worth living and it need not be terminal for that to happen (I suppose most people mean incurable rather than terminal). Im sorry for your suffering , there are a couple of questions I’d like to ask you related to the latter part of your comment but I don’t know if I should , given that this topic is probably intensely personal for you.
We run into this with the insanity defense in cases of violent crimes as well. How can we define “insanity”? Is it simply a matter of doing something so bizarre and heinous and offensive to the public that the public is horrified? “Oh, he murdered a child. *I* would never murder a child; no one in their right mind would murder a child. Thus, he must be insane.” Or do we accept that sane people can murder a child, but if the murderer dismembers the corpse and dresses the pieces in dog sweaters or something, or mails them to his mother or to a local priest, well, then, THAT’s the tipping point? If our only criterion is “That’s not something *I* would choose to do, therefore, no one who makes such a choice can possibly be of sound mind because if they were, they’d think just like me”, well, then we’re in a big ol’ subjective mess. And it creates scenarios where the clever criminal can introduce bizarre details for that very purpose – copping an insanity plea. “No SANE person could possibly think of THAT!!”
There you go again, Raging Bee, causing me all sorts of ethical discomfort! So it’s NOT okay for someone to take her/his own life because anyone who wants to do that is, by definition, not of sound mind (because no one of sound mind could possibly want to do that because then they would disagree with YOU), but it’s perfectly *FINE* – USEFUL, even! -to murder people under the proper circumstances??? REALLY????????? Bringing someone’s life to an unnatural end is okay for someone else to do TO a person, but not something a person is allowed to choose for himself or have any assistance with?? This scenario horrifies me. It seems just so completely bass-ackwards. If anything, everyone should be able to live free from the risk of others stepping in and ending their lives against their will – THAT seems to me to be the most basic fundamental issue here, and the one that everyone should have assurance that it will never be allowed! (Hence no death penalty option.) What people do with their own lives is completely separate – it seems so clear to me… Right to life should mean that no one external to oneself is allowed to end one’s life. Right to life, though, does not and should not mean “obligation to remain/be kept alive against one’s will when one has made it clear one no longer wishes to remain alive.”
So it’s forbidden to assist someone who has made the very personal decision to end her/his life, but it’s just *FINE* to murder people, again, under what you have decided are the proper circumstances??? I don’t understand how anyone can find any consistency at all in such positions, so please enlighten me if possible. I am seeing a very strong bias against allowing people the right to self-determination in the case of ending their lives, which is obviously not an abhorrence about deliberately ending life (see your comments about favoring the death penalty), but, rather, seems to stem more from a non-examined, non-supported, rather arbitrary belief/opinion that “Suicide is wrong and people shouldn’t do it full stop the end.” Again, please correct me if I’m wrong here.
You would really prohibit paralyzed people from taking their own lives if they so desired, just because they would need someone else’s assistance? I would think this would run you into trouble with the ADA O_O
I find myself returning to A Masked Avenger’s observation @41, first quote this post:
dshetty @49
I prefer that suicide be openly discussed. I don’t mind answering personal questions if the resulting discussion can be useful to others.
My situation is my situation, and my choices may not apply to others.
@Stella
Thx. The reason Im asking is because I seem to be at a different conclusion than yours so I just wanted to know what/how you think or why
Must I be examined for mental illness before I make the decision to take my own life?
So if you ask present me (happy with life) – I’d say that , yes indeed , if in future I am suicidal , I would want to be evaluated for mental illness , and if of unsound mind, prevented from suicide. Would you say that your past self of 30 years ago would say the same? If yes , then , my current self (and your past self) is able to evaluate the situation with less bias (but with less experience) is that self necessarily wrong?
I think the point of the – poorly chosen – phrase “self-ownership” is that nobody else can own you. The phrase is poorly chosen because what you can own, you can give away or sell. And I think most of us will agree that nobody can sell themselves into slavery, or sell their own body as meat. And if we cannot do that, can we really be said to own ourselves? Better than self-ownership, perhaps, is self-rule, but we already have a term for that: Autonomy. When you deny someone the right to commit suicide, you are limiting their autonomy. Ownership doesn’t seem to be a factor.
52 dshetty says
I couldn’t guess at what my past self might have thought. It’s my current self that is dealing with problems that have no good solution.
This isn’t an emotional reaction for me. It’s a very practical decision.
You will come to your conclusions based on what you need at a particular time, in particular circumstances.
@Stella
Ok – thank you