Suicide 3 Essay, Research Paper
Since the beginning of time, people have been committing suicide. Self inflicted death, or
suicide, can be defined as “choosing the mode, time, situation, or occasion for ending
one’s life.” In general, the word suicide has a negative connotation and is looked upon
unfavorably. Yet in some circumstances, killing oneself can be considered acceptable or
even the right thing to do. There are several aspects to suicide and the law, but I am only
going to discuss a few of them. First of all why anyone would want to take their own life
and what is a rational suicide. Secondly, in some ways assistance has played in the area of
suicide. Next, what the constitution says and see if any of the states have allowed suicide.
Finally, we ll study some of the cases that have been brought before the American courts.
Suicide has become a big part of American society, year after year more people are
taking their own lives for many different reasons. A lot of philosophers have found all the
reasons of rational suicide. A rational suicide has been given five basic criteria that usually
must be met for the person’s act to be considered rational. The five criteria which a person
must show for their suicide to be considered rational are, “the ability to reason, realistic
world view, adequacy of information, avoidance of harm, and accordance with
fundamental interests. A lot of suicides are grouped in the rational category because they
are committed so the person can be saved from the pain they may be experiencing from a
terminal disease. This seems to be just about the only true rational and morally correct
reason why a person should commit suicide. Yet a lot of times these patients are “heavily
sedated, so that it is impossible for the mental processes of decision leading to action to
occur. In other words these patients have a rational reason to commit suicide, yet their
mind is not capable of making that decisions. So if terminally ill patients are the only ones
who have a good rational reason to commit suicide, then where does that leave everyone
else? Well just about everyone else commits suicide because of a little thing that enters
everyone’s life at some time and that thing is called depression. Depression can come from
several different things, such as a loss of something like a job, a loved one, a limb such as
an arm or leg, or anything else that might be held dear to that person. Other things could
be rejection at home or in the work place, abuse, and sometimes even the thought of
getting old and not wanting to know what tomorrow holds in store. There are a lot of
arguments that these are rational reasons but just because you are having a bad day doesn’t
actually mean you have a rational reason to go out and throw yourself off a building or tie
a rope around your neck.
Another big issue about suicide today is the one that deals with assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide is where a patient that is terminally ill comes to a physician or even a
friend or family member at times and asks them to help end their life. There are several
different ways to assist someone in suicide, you can inject them with a lethal amount of
drugs, you can turn off their machines that is helping keep them alive, there have even
been cases where the friend has put a bullet in the person’s body. The place that the law
has really played a major role in American society is in assisted suicides
The big question in America is whether or not you have the constitutional, or
moral, right to commit suicide. There have been very strong arguments for both cases.
Joel Feinberg argues that the constitution does not give us that right simply because of
Thomas Jefferson’s famous words “that all men are endowed with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life . He says “How could a person have a right to terminate
his own life if his right to life is in alienable? Yet others have had a strong argument for the
other side also, and their interpretation of the constitution is totally different. Alan Sullivan
argues that the Constitution has given us the right to have self-determination over matters
in our life. The first amendment alone gives us the freedom to determine what religion we
want to believe in, and the right to say what we want when we want to say it. The
fourteenth amendment gives us the right to determine what we want for ourselves.
Sullivan says, That suicide is a ‘fundamental right’ and those are explicitly guaranteed by
the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has recognized another class of fundamental rights
whose source lies outside specific guarantees of the Constitution, such as the rights to
marital and sexual privacy, the right of a woman to exercise control over her body, the
right to travel freely from one place to another, and the right to learn certain subjects in
school.” Sullivan feels the right to take your own life falls into this category of
fundamental rights. He just wants to make sure that the person who is about to take his
own life is of sound mind and will not do unnecessary harm to himself or anyone else that
is around him.
Yet the law really can’t do anything to someone who has killed themselves. The
place that the law has really played a major role in American society is in assisted suicides.
There have been many cases where family members and friends have been prosecuted for
aiding or assisting in a suicide. One of the most famous cases was the People vs. Roberts.
According to Leslie Pickering Francis, “It occurred in Michigan, in 1920, Frank Robert’s
wife was incurably ill and bed ridden with Multiple Sclerosis. At her request, he mixed
poison and left it by her bedside; she drank the poison quite clearly knowing what she was
doing. The Michigan Supreme court affirmed Robert’s conviction of murder, reasoning
that he had intended his wife to be able to take her life as she wished, and that she would
have been unable to do so without his aid. The law has been determined by the states and
the states alone, the Supreme Court has not interfered yet. The states have done one of
three things, “First, twenty-five states, including nine with recent penal code revisions,
contain no separate statutory treatment of assisting suicide.
Yet the law really can’t do anything to someone who has killed themselves. The
place that the law has really played a major role in American society is in assisted suicides.
As of now you have the right to commit suicide anytime you want. Yet depending on what
state you live in you could be punished by the law for assisting in a suicide. Only time can
tell what will become of suicide and the law. Today there are still cases in the court
battling to try and legalize assisted suicide. Suicide is not the way out of everything
though. I understand in some cases that it might be the best thing , like saving a loved one
from excruciating pain yet nothing can be so bad that it deserves taking your