I think most women have thought about abortion to some degree and formed an opinion on whether it's the right choice for them, or under what conditions they would entertain the idea of an abortion versus keeping the child in an unexpected pregnancy. In these cases, you're right: discouraging women who have thought about the process would be seen as in bad taste.
But what if the woman was being pressured to abort (or to keep) the child by outside pressure? Then intervention would be seen as supporting the woman, not as interfering, and it'd be in good taste.
IMO, suicide is very similar. A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. I don't think it's too much of a leap from that to the idea that a large proportion of suicides themselves are being done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the "outside pressure" of a brain that is suffering a mental illness.
I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. How long do people have to suffer in order for you to say "this person's done enough thinking about it, he can go"?
Speaking from experience, I disagree. I'm in favor of a generalized right to commit suicide as a fundamental ground of self-determination, but it can often be a compulsive rather a considered action; furthermore it can be based on a fundamentally irrational discounting of the future ('I'll never be happy again, my life can only get worse') which may be merely temporary or the result of developmental delays/deficits in handling emotional swings.
> A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment.
A different conclusion you could draw from this are that the failed attempts failed because they weren't really trying to kill themselves, a sort of regretting-in-advance, if you will. I feel pretty safe in saying that successful suicide attempts don't go on to regret it, and it's not at all obvious that the failures and the successes are examples of the same phenomenon.
And why is that? It's her body and she has the right to remove the fetus in her. Why does she not have the right to put a tankful of Nitrogen in her lungs if she chooses to do so?
My position sees death as a permanent zero. If your life is continually in the negatives and you have to work every day to keep it there then putting it at zero permanently without any more effort required seems a good deal to me.
Well maybe the words chosen are wrong. I agree that there would be no "me" left to do the measuring. In death there would also be no "me" left to measure things and find it is negative either.
Right; so it can't be seen as a solution to suffering, right? Because you won't be suffering or not-suffering; you won't 'be' at all. Its not an answer, because the question is nonsensical at that point.
The only question worth considering is: how do I get from negative to positive? And the answer is: if the problem is external, then change your situation (move to Mexico; change your name; go plant potatoes in Idaho; whatever). If its internal, harder. You have to change yourself.
