#assistedsuicide

It's just that I keep seeing people express this sentiment that bodily autonomy includes the right to any suicide (not just legal, sanctioned assisted suicide/dying). And it's so wrong. It's dead wrong.

I'm a survivor myself - ten years since. And I'm horrified by the sentiment I keep seeing. That it's okay to shrug your shoulders at someone's suicide/suicidality because "bodily autonomy". What the hell are you thinking! Bodily autonomy is usually great and should be respected. But suicide should be the exception to bodily autonomy (unless legal/sanctioned by a health professional as part of a terminal diagnosis) - bodily autonomy can't happen if you're dead! These sentiments belong to an absolutely dangerous logical extreme that needs to be dropped yesterday.

Sparking incident was reading this article and seeing someone's tumblr comment citing "bodily autonomy" as to why they didn't feel pressed to be concerned about the suicide. That's dangerous. Even if a suicide doesn't make someone sad, suggesting that suicides are within the realm of bodily autonomy is obscene.

Yes, technically one would be exercising bodily autonomy when commiting suicide. No, this does not mean it's okay. The problem is treating bodily autonomy as an invisible do-not-cross line when it comes to suicide prevention. Using it as a shield to be passive and wash your hands of an uncomfortable obligation towards your fellow humans terrifies me.

It's dystopian. Suicide prevention is the "in order to have tolerance we must be intolerant of intolerance" of bodily autonomy. It's the situation where you have to break the "rule" in order to cause the least harm.

I will always *always* be an advocate for suicide prevention. People who shrug and shirk responsibility to be the "village" citing "bodily autonomy" scare me. It's horrifying as a survivor to see this rhetoric.

*ALL OF THE YES OPTIONS WOULD INCLUDE THE REQUIRED PSYCH AND HEALTH EVALUATION*

It would be great if you could give more of an in depth opinion in the comments and if possible include where you are from.

Faced with these numbers, are we actually expected to believe that before Canada legalised assisted suicide, there were really that many people who were in such intolerable and untreatable pain that they were just itching to die early? I doubt it. I think it's more likely that where assisted suicide is legalised, attitudes towards suicide and the sanctity of life change for the worse.

This is why I object to the term 'assisted dying', which I regard as an insidious euphemism. This issue is not separable from the problem of suicide more broadly in society. The rates of suicide in the Netherlands have only increased since that country legalised assisted suicide, compare 8.3 suicides per 100,000 deaths in 2007 with 11.3 per 100,000 in 2017. The 'sanctity of life' argument is not just religionese, it's backed up by the facts.

Opponents of assisted suicide, like myself, talk about Canada and the Netherlands and Belgium so much that even I think we begin to sound like a broken record, but I think this is warranted. These countries are only the most extreme examples, but out of the 19 countries which have legalised assisted suicide, nearly all of them have expanded the eligibility criteria beyond the supposdely robust raft of safeguards originally promised.