(July 5, 2015 at 8:58 pm)Jenny A Wrote:(July 5, 2015 at 2:04 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Many times, self-inflicted suicide attempts can go badly. For example, people who shoot themselves in the head with a gun do not always die. And if they do not die, then they are generally worse off than they were before. The point isn't to suffer and then die; the point is to die as cleanly and easily as possible.
Also, many means of death are unavailable to the general public. I cannot go and buy any drugs I want from a pharmacy. I need a prescription for many of the drugs they sell. So if I want to use some of the better drugs for this purpose, I need to get someone's permission to get them.
If they sold death kits "over the counter," then it might eliminate the need to get someone's help in choosing a good death in most cases. But they do not sell such things.
Yes it is quite possible to flub a suicide. Many flubbed suicides weren't very serious attempts. Serious attempts usually succeed. And if you fail, you can always try again. Death on the other hand is rather permanent.
It is not true that if you fail, you can always try again. It depends very much on how incapacitated one is from the first attempt.
It would be more humane to help people do it right, then to have extra suffering because someone does not manage a clean death.
And no one is asking you to kill yourself. Your life is yours. But other people's lives are theirs, and so they should decide for themselves. You don't want others deciding whether you live or die, do you? If you want that courtesy, you should extend the same courtesy to others.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
