Self Determination, right to die.

So as seems to be fairly common at the moment, as I ready myself to talk about a subject, a media frenzy kicks up about the same subject. Today it was the death of Tony Scott, the film director who grew up within miles of where I live, who ended his own life apparently as the result of receiving a grim medical diagnosis.

The main sticking point when discussing suicide seems to be an innate need to justify and understand the act in an objective fashion. To lay out a one size fits all set of circumstances under which we as the mass conscious can accept the act, without attaching to it a prerequisite of an indefinable intention based almost deontological value judgement.

Cases like Mr. Scott's are the border on which Assisted Suicide advocates rally, they argue that the circumstances of soon to be diminishing mental capacity, physical capability and immanent pain mandate a stance of allowing the individual the right to make autonomous decisions while still possible, and aiding in the facilitation of such acts if the agent is no longer capable.

This is a stance I just can't see as being fully realised. If you assign a value on life, and you state that that value can be removed/ negated by adding in a set amount of future pain and debilitation it's ultimately arbitrary to overly define those required negatives. Although the need to stringently define suicide is felt even in it's title, and the way it is commonly used only for those deaths in which some morally acceptable condition is absent, voluntary euthanasia, martyrdom. Thus attaching a negative connotation to any perceived suicide attempt, whenever the word is used, the decision to end the life of the agent by the agent themselves already judged as flawed and unworthy of full understanding.

If the intention of an act is to cause ones own death, knowingly and with full capacity to make said decision, I see no reason at all to relegate that decision into a subcategory of suicide, Voluntary Euthanasia is merely acceptable suicide, understandable by the masses, and Martyrdom merely self annihilation for a "greater cause". Arguing the merits of intention, be they to escape future pain or lack of capacity, or dying for the greater good I believe skips the main point. The autonomy of the one making the choice.

I see no reason to deny the rational choices of any individual with the capacity to make them. Who else can define the value subjectively speaking of their own life apart from the agent themselves.

I would grant anyone with the capacity to make their own decision the right to self autonomy.

Anon Anon