When is Assisted Suicide Justified?

[baywax]

Its like I said about killing yourself because you're in some sort of pain.

Just as your life is expiring and you drift into the unknown... the phone starts ringing and its the doctor, lottery, girlfriend, whathaveyou... with a cure for your ailment.

 

[jreelawg]

Suicide is painful to your family and friends. Plus it is a bad way to go down in history if you care about that type of thing.
Most important though, the attitude that led up to suicide is painful. You don't just go from being very happy to suicide in a moment and experience no pain. The person who wrote those lyrics must have been in some serious emotional turmoil.

Why inflict so much self emotional torment on yourself in the first place. You don't need to obsess yourself with hate and misery. Emotional pain is relative. One feels intense emotional pain if he can't keep his business going, or what not. To some who have much less they may feel the pain when they watch their family murdered. Yet their is a path to happiness for all free people, and to give into your critical negative self judgment is a weakness. The least painful path to life is a way in which you would never want to kill yourself.

Maybe the mode of thinking that leads up to suicide should be included as the process of suicide, and then suicide cannot be called painless.

 

[baywax]

Then there's always assisted suicide:

Britain's Sky TV criticized for assisted death film

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/081210/canada/canada_us_britain_death

I think the main sticking point about assisted suicide is that we don't always know someone has requested to be killed. Its very hard to prove consent in other words. Especially with the progress being made in counterfeit signatures etc.