[Yorick]

Originally posted by Night Stalker: [QB] Yorick I too see where you are comming from, but I tend to agree with Timber. The examples you cite, murder, spousal abuse, ect, are cases where personal freedoms infringe on another person. I have always been an advocate of my freedom ends where another's begins.

How does this make suicide any different? The personal freedom to kill yourself directly impacts another person as I've shown. It can rob a child of a father, a person of their sister, a parent of their child etc etc etc. Suicide victims are those left behind. The effect on others is precisely my point!

I know how you feel about suicide's victums being those left behind. I had an uncle that did it when he was 22 (I never knew him) and it cast a shadow over my family for decades. But how is suicide any different than any "untimenly" death? Those left behind always have to deal with the shock.

Every single person close to the suicider feels to blame. Blame doesn't occur with most other untimely deaths. Everyone feels to blame. This horrible guilt causes some people undoing. It destroys marriages, especially if one spouse blames the other for their childs death.

It also, as I mentioned in my ex-wifes friends case, can lead to other family members doing the same thing. The son killed himself after his mother did. In a person losing a fight against terminal illness, or an accident, the relatives don't have to fight the attack on their own will to live in such a measure. My ex-wife came close to ending her own life. We ended up marrying after that, but that's all another story.

Taking away a person's right to die is just selfish of society. To me, medical technology os more to blame. They have come up with many advances that allow the extension of life long after what would considdered natural. It has also removed societies ability to deal with death and dying. Take the case in Florida right now. There is a woman who has been on life support for a decade now. The huband claims his wife never wanted to be kept alive with extreme measures and has fought many legal battles for the hospital to "pull the plug". Her parents don't want to loose their daughter so they keep fighting to keep her alive. Now they claim that the marriage was bad and that he doesn't have their daughter's intrests at heart. Who is the cruel party here? Who is the selfish one? Is the person that commits suicide selfish? Or is society?

The Florida case is an excellent example. The woman is of value to her parents and those that are fighting to keep her alive. It is highly probable that the woman hasn't the mental faculties to understand what is going on. However, she is of value to them. The husband is another matter. There are questions about how she suffocated the night in question, why he did nothing with the million dollars to rehabilitate her, and that she was speaking of a divorce before her brain damage.

If he doesn't want her in his life, he can divorce her, hand her over to her parents. It's been twelve years. Of course he needs closure, but that's no reason to deprive her parents of hope and her presence.

What of other disabled people who can't feed themselves? Other brain damaged people who have to be fed by humans? She's not on life support, she's on a feeding tube.

People go on about how people "wouldn't want to live in that situation" but an extreme situation can change perspective radically. When I was in hospital with massive blood loss through internal bleeding (lost 50% or more), my life was reduced to challenges such as walking down a hall on my own, or pleasures such as tasting ice. Ones perspective about acceptable levels of survival can radically change given the right circumstances.

In any case if someone fighting for their life really loses the will to live, they often do die. Naturally. The cases of a person dying quite close to their longtime spouse dying are numerous and well documented. Johnny Cash being a recent case in point.

[ 10-17-2003, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: Yorick ]