(December 16, 2016 at 12:08 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(December 16, 2016 at 11:54 am)SteelCurtain Wrote: You're not wrong, CL. I completely understand your point here. When that happened we did mobilize as a group.
I think if it were done as it would have to be done, with weeks/months of counseling and not in a decision made at low point, our reaction would have been different. I still would try to talk my friend out of it, but in the end if through an entire process s/he decided that it was their time, I would be begrudgingly supportive.
The problem I see with this though, is the kind of attitude it would eventually lead to. Things may start off that way, as you describe, because as a society we are still conditioned to seeing suicide as a negative thing... and our reaction is still to try to save the person and help them get better. But I can see how starting to make these allowances for assisted suicide of physically healthy yet depressed people can eventually turn into a more apathetic attitude towards suicide as a whole. And eventually it would get to the point where us as a society would become desensitized to suicide and our first reaction when someone is suicidal will no longer be to try to help them get better. It will simply be "Hey bro, you do you. Your body, your choice, none of my business to try to stop you." Does that make sense?
We need to maintain that life is important and special for the good of our own society.
It makes sense, but I don't see it as a likely scenario. There is nothing to suggest that more people are going to want to kill themselves. The vast, overwhelming majority of suicidal folks are not fully committed, and most people in general would never consider it. Adding weeks or months of counseling and therapy with specialists would be a perfect way to mitigate those who might be making a spur of the moment decision.
I also agree with pool in scope but not magnitude. Normalizing the right to die within a clinical context could make it easier to talk about. It has already shifted the conversation for EOL discussions. Making it easier to talk about makes it easier to talk through. Which could reduce the number of people who attempt suicide.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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