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To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.lucky.w,rec.arts.comics.dc.universe From: catherine yronwodeSubject: Re: Yronwodes (BBC investigates nagasiva) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 23:35:06 GMT Hieronymous707 wrote: > > >From: catherine yronwode cat@luckymojo.com > > >I certainly am in favour of the immediate > >decriminalization of suicide. How about > >you? > > I'm curious as to why you are in favor of the "immediate > decriminalization" of an activity that is already functionally > uninforceable as a legal proscription,and for which there is > no practical deterent beyond common sense. > > Do you really think anyone has ever chosen not to commit > suicide simply because it's against the law? You are missing three important points: 1) Wherever suicide is a criminal act, people who attempt suicide and fail in the attempt are liable to incarceration. This usually takes the form of involuntary incarceration in a psych ward. I believe that this often harms individuals. 2) The decriminalization of suicide would ipso facto also result in the decriminalization of assisted suicide, since assisting someone to commit a non-criminal act is invariable legal. I believe this would benefit individuals. 3) I personally have known people who have indeed chosen not to commit suicide for religious and/or social-criminal reasons, even when terminally ill and in great pain with no hope of recovery -- because their self-view was that they were "moral" or "law-abiding" persons or because they did not wish to risk the legal status of someone who might assist them to commit suicide. I believe that all religious, moral, social, and criminal impediments to suicide should be removed in the interest of helping people of all feel at peace with their desire to end their lives and to know that it will not be held against them. Again, if this frustrated attempt at a flame war results in people thinking about why it might be important to advocate for legal and humane methods of life termination, then i not disturbed that my surname is in the subject line. And, as i said at the outset, the BBC 's story on suicide was about par for the course on a slow news day. I have seen much more hostility and paranoia in the course of a media feeding frenzy when i edited trading cards that advocated safe sex and AIDS education, for instance. Sex and death always lead, on a slow news day. When there is no sex, then death alone suffices. Cordially, cat yronwode ]
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