Who is responsible for suicide?
In Australia it is no longer against the law to commit suicide. Gee whoever thought up the law of making suicide illegal was really dumb!!
It is however illegal to assist someone else in attempting or completing a suicide. This includes suicide pacts. When two (or more) people make a suicide pact, that means they may both together take an overdose of medication so that they can die together. If one person dies and the other person lives then the person who survives can be charged with manslaughter or aiding and abetting a suicide.
The surviving person is seen as responsible (At least in part) for the death of the other person. So by entering into the pact you are seen as assisting the other person to suicide, by the making of such an agreement. I suppose by the copycat effect and so forth.
This of course raises the thorny issue of who is responsible for the death of a person who knowingly decides to take their own life.
Question
At which point do you believe you have some personal responsibility for the death (suicide) of the other person.
1. A person tells you 1 month before that they feel like killing self and then do. You take no major action to intervene.
2. A person tell you 1 day before that they feel like killing self and then do. You take no major action to intervene.
3. A person whom you live with has made repeated suicidal gestures and again threatens to. You can’t take any more and go away for a few days and the person suicides. Part of you feels relief that it is all over now.
4. A person threatens to suicide if you leave the relationship. You leave and the person completes a suicide.
5. A person tells you about how bad they have felt for so long and that they will kill them self. You say you understand and then they complete a suicide. You think that that is that person’s decision and OK.
6. A person in the same circumstances (Despair for many years) asks about suicide and you give them the book “Final Exit�. ( This is a book that that clearly describes methods of suicide). They use one of the methods in the book to suicide.
7. A person in the same circumstances (Despair for many years) asks about suicide and you purchase the poison for them as they are not able to move around to get it. They use the poison to suicide.
8. You travel with an incapacitated person to a country where assisted suicide is legal for the soul purpose of allowing that person to suicide and they do.
9. A person in the same circumstances (Despair for many years) asks about suicide and you purchase the poison for them as they are not able to move around to get it, and you prepare and administer it to the person because they are not physically capable of doing so.
In all these scenarios below the person is at least 25 years old, is fully aware of what suicide is and is not of low IQ, effected by drugs, or confused in their thinking. The person is very aware of what they are doing.
At which number do you feel morally/personally responsible for the person’s suicidal death. This is not asking about the legal responsibility for the death, but where you feel morally/personally responsible for helping that person die.
