Re: Death Penalty redux

#807767

wakeflood
Participant

“Another way to look at Person A is to ask what would happen to his/her request if capital punishment were abolished. Shame, self-hatred, depression, the desire to atone for the crime, or desire to avoid life in prison would not be accepted as reasons for assisted suicide.”

That’s an interesting thought. Which gets into the question of individual autonomy over one’s body and whether the state has the right to prevent an inmate from committing suicide? The kinds of things that are required to take away the opportunity to kill yourself get fairly extensive and could suggest that the life lived at that point is quite grim, isolated and debate-ably cruel and unusual? Just pondering…