Suicide as a Natural Right- Part I

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The act of suicide is a serious matter that has a litany of inseparable moral, physiological, psychological, and societal considerations. Unanimously, the institutional consensus is that intervention is imperative in addressing the issue of suicide. Although little consideration is given to whether intervening in every alleged suicide attempt is ethical. In most cases, intervention entails involuntary commitment orders placed upon “suicidal” individuals. There is often a wide degree of digression allotted to mental health professionals in determining who is a danger to themselves. The nuances within these laws vary state by state. It should be noted the majority of states have involuntary commitment laws. As noted in a recent Supreme Court decision has indicated that the reasonableness for involuntary commitment under due process has already been established. Citing Addington v. Texas   , O’Connor v. Donaldson, and Foucha v. Louisiana. Do the despondent nature and impending bodily harm of a suicidal person warrant them being held against their will? Despite any ethical counterarguments, the law of the land indicates that such measures are justified.

All because a specific policy is codified in statutory law or is validated in case laws does not make it moral. Our law ought to reflect a sense of justice, however, this normative ideal is seldom achieved. Often many laws appear to be a capricious byproduct of overextended digression. If the Lockean proviso people do own themselves, at the very least involuntary commitment laws present a conflict between the legal statute and our natural right of self-ownership. From a Libertarian perspective, this is a right that should not be infringed upon. The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume wrote:

A man who retires from life does not harm society: he only ceases to do good, which, if it is an injury, is of the lowest kind. All our obligations to do good to society seem to imply something reciprocal. I receive the benefits of society, and therefore ought to promote its interests; but when I withdraw myself altogether from society, can I be bound any longer? But allowing that our obligations to do good were perpetual, they have certainly some bounds. I am not obliged to do a small well to society at the expense of great harm to myself. Why then should I prolong a miserable existence because of some frivolous advantage which the public may perhaps receive from me?

This short excerpt from the large corpus of Hume’s work encapsulates the issue with mandatory commitment laws; suicide presents little harm to society. In contrast, hold a man against his will for committing no crime would be quite damaging. It also should be noted that “suicide” across the board is not universally condemned, but is permissible based upon a qualifying context. For instance, some argue that elderly people suffering from chronic illness(es) have the right to end their own lives. Predicted upon the basis that they no longer owe anything else to society and are no longer a stakeholder. If membership to a community is voluntary, then withdrawal through either suicide or self-isolation should also be voluntary, making anything else coercion. The preference towards the norms of suicide towards the elderly and sick are also reflected in our laws.  As of 2019, eight states allow for physician-assisted suicide this privilege is only permitted for those suffering from a terminal illness. There are two interrelated flaws with the logic behind only allowing the terminally ill to have legal permission to end their own lives. The first concern is that this undermines the severity of mental illness. Through sanctioning such procedures to those suffering from physical illness, a double standard has been created. For years we have heard that mental illness is also an illness, however, mental health professions do not even vindicate their own words. These individuals are actively allowing for physical illness to hold a privileged legal status over mental illness. The second fallacy is that one of the prevalent arguments for intervention in suicide attempts is that the person’s thinking is impaired by psychological distress or intoxication. To allow the chronically ill to do the same is hypocritical under this very same line of logic. Those who are terminally are generally on psychoactive pain killers or are in intense pain. Couldn’t their capacity for reasoning be questionable at best under such debilitating conditions? If mental illness is an illness couldn’t it be terminal in its own right? These are two discrepancies that few pundits in civil society would have the courage to address honesty.

If we own ourselves, we have the implicit right to kill ourselves without any interference. That does not necessarily provide a moral justification for a suicide attempt but is moral condemnation obstruct this right. Analogous to how soliciting a prostitute may not necessarily be moral, but to utilize legal institutions to disrupt this exchange is unquestionably immoral. If under Arizona statute ARS 13-1304 sustains that holding a person against their will is illegal, then the same can be said about involuntary commitment. The difference is due to a pedantic technicality than a justifiable ethical argument.