Suicide and love: Do actions speak louder than words?

The spark for this post came from an offhand sentence in a recent student paper—and the paper wasn’t even on suicide:

“To Brittany Maynard, the cost of treatment afflicting her with a bald head, 1st degree burns, morphine-resistant pain and suffer from cognitive abilities outweighed the benefit of spending the last six months with the people she loved in the condition she is currently in."

If you do not yet know about Brittany Maynard’s publicly pre-announced suicide—her now-famous editorial “My Right to Die with Dignity at 29” came out only last month—she moved from California to Oregon for one reason and one reason only: to legally obtain a prescription of lethal drugs from an Oregon doctor.

When I Googled Brittany’s name today (November 21), the first listed link was a piece on Cosmopolitan.com (!) promoting a posthumous Compassion & Choices video released yesterday (November 20) which uses Brittany’s tragic circumstances to again promote its own political goals.

There are many things worth discussing about Brittany’s tragic situation and decision, the political goals of C & C, and the relations between them. But in this short post I’d like to make just one small point that relates to something unsettling I’ve noticed about what Brittany constantly stressed in her editorial and her videos: the love between her and family and friends.

I’m reluctant to even attempt making this point. But here goes:

My decision to take my own life for prudential reasons—reasons referring to the anticipated benefits and burdens of continuing to live—necessarily makes a certain kind of statement—not merely about the value of my life to me, but the value of others’ lives to me.

(This point is different than the oft-heard claim that my decision to take my life because of a condition I have—like a brain disease—necessarily expresses a certain kind of statement about the value of other people’s lives with that condition.)

One can make this point strongly, and in ways that sound harsh. But one can make it in softer ways as well.

Here’s a strong statement of the point by G. K. Chesterton over a century ago (1902):

“Grave moderns told us that we must not even say “poor fellow,” of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines…”

Here’s a softer, narrower, more cautious statement of the point (from me):

Whether or not you think it morally wrong or a sin, my choice to end my life for prudential reasons is not only a commentary on the value I place on my life, but is also a commentary on the value I place on the potential and actual contents of my life—including the people I love.

Of course, not all suicides are equal in this way, or even made for prudential reasons in the first place: Socrates is not Saul, Romeo is not Robin Williams, and Juliet is not Judas.

But so-called ‘rational’ suicides—in particular, those in which a mentally competent adult decides to take her own life because she fears the anticipated blessings of continuing to live will be outweighed by the anticipated burdens—cannot but send a jarring message to loved ones.

The message? “My life is no longer worth living.” Translated? “You are no longer worth me living for.”

When I choose to end my life on purpose for prudential reasons, even though my words to those surrounding me may be “I love you,” my actions are, at the same time, saying, “I would rather die than spend more time with you.”

I think this interpretation of my act is correct even factoring in my fear of pain and losing control.

Brittany Maynard and those like her are sometimes treated primarily as victims—of disease, or C & C, or both. It’s human nature to pity victims and to try to comfort them, reassure them, give them what they want, and avoid causing them to feel guilt or shame.

But perhaps treating them this way risks morally infantilizing them.

Why not treat them like moral adults, and show them how their actions speak like words?