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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Denying people help for suicide

mardi 26 octobre 2021 à 02:00

This article argues for denying people help for suicide on the ground that inadequate support for sick people would drive them to choose death.

It does happen that some people choose suicide because their options for living are lousy. It must already happen that, in some cases, their options for living could be better if they could have certain kinds of help. I agree it would be good to give them more help. If this leads more people to choose to stay alive, that's success.

But the question here is whether we should force people to suffer longer when they would rather die. The article implicitly assumes that we can compel governments to improve aid for the sick and disabled by making them people keep suffering. This approach has not been very effective so far.

Here's a subtle discussion of the disagreement over assisted suicide.