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If some sicko molested your child? Raped or murdered your loved one? Cut you off in traffic?

If some sicko molested your child? Raped or murdered your loved one? Cut you off in traffic?

10 comments

[–] xyzzy 4 points (+4|-0)

Probably when someone wants to be put out of their misery.

[–] simone 4 points (+4|-0)

I agree and have voted for death with dignity. If I have loved one in terrible pain and suffering and they are unable to physically administer the lethal dose of drugs I would help them. I would hope loved ones would do the same for me.

[–] [Deleted] 4 points (+4|-0)

I was a proxy for my mom. She said if she is ever on machines it was up to me to get her off of them. So I did.

Any time there is consent.
Either explicit, as in assisted suicide, or voluntary combat (sport, dual, whatever) .
Or implied, as in someone attacks you, or a soldier of an army that is at war with you. Situations where the person would expect death to be a consequence of their actions.

[–] [Deleted] 3 points (+3|-0)

What if a healthy person wants an assisted suicide?

That is up to those involved. It is not my place to make that decision for others.
But I do not feel it would necessarily be unethical. Context would be important.

[–] simone 3 points (+3|-0)

Wouldn't a healthy person be able to assist themselves with suicide?

[–] [Deleted] 3 points (+3|-0)

Sure. But most people have an aversion to suiciding themselves. Some for religious reasons other for personal.

[–] TheRedArmy 2 points (+2|-0)

Defending the life of another also qualifies as a morally just reason for taking a life.

As for vile crimes in which you're exacting revenge, rather than preventing a crime through force (compare someone with a gun to a person's head to one minute after that gunman has killed the person already and is not threatening anyone else actively), I do not believe murder is justified. No matter how vile the crime, how perverse the offender, if there is not an imminent threat, they should be arrested and dealt with through the justice system (which, by the way, has the ideas of revenge and retribution built into it).

Although I don't personally approve of suicide (for 99.9% most of us in the west, I don't think any situation is so terrible that suicide is actually the best course of action; edge cases of mental illness/being in an extreme situation like a Syria or Liberia, you could maybe justify it), I do believe in the right of individuals to partake in it. So although I wouldn't recommend or help someone with a suicide, I don't think they're committing a moral wrong by taking their own life.

And as @Innocentbystander said, consent makes it morally acceptable for those in that situation, although personal qualms would prevent me personally from engaging in that activity.