Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws Quotes

“Just leave us all alone, to struggle and flounder and weaken and then give us access to prescription drugs so we can die, and pat yourself on the back for respecting our autonomy, while avoiding difficult questions about why so many people in our country want to end their lives in the first place.”
― Susan Stefan, Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws: Examining Current Approaches to Suicide in Policy and Law

“The lesson that U.S. social policies and laws teach is crystal clear: if you are feeling like you wish you were dead, you’d better keep quiet about it. That is, unless you want a hospital bed, or to get out of a jail cell, or to get your loved ones to take your pain seriously, in which case you should say you are suicidal whether it’s true or not.”
― Susan Stefan, Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws: Examining Current Approaches to Suicide in Policy and Law

“There may be reasons to permit the State to override individual autonomy in matters of suicide, but “the value to others of a person’s life” isn’t one of them. To accept it would further devalue the lives of people whose circumstances proclaim the utter indifference of others: people in institutions who have never received a single visitor, people who live in cardboard boxes. Life may be made worth living because of our connections with others, but the law’s insistence that each life has intrinsic value cannot depend on whether others value it, or are even aware of it.”
― Susan Stefan, Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws: Examining Current Approaches to Suicide in Policy and Law

“For doctors to determine that someone lacks capacity, or courts to find someone legally incompetent, is an extremely serious act and should be undertaken with hesitation and caution. A person who is suicidal is already in doubt about his or her value in the world, already feels powerless to transform or transcend life’s burdens. To declare this person incompetent is to confirm these feelings, to officially endorse the individual’s hopeless state. A finding of lack of capacity or incompetence completely erases the individual as a legally and medically respected decision-maker. It is exactly the opposite policy from what we should pursue: engaging a suicidal person in an earnest and respectful conversation about why he or she wants to die. Expanding the definition of incompetence as a utilitarian means of preventing suicide or controlling the actions of a suicidal person is dangerous and unnecessary social policy.”
― Susan Stefan, Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws: Examining Current Approaches to Suicide in Policy and Law