u/Freethinking-

ADVISORY: This post explores suicide from a purely bioethical and constructivist perspective. If you are experiencing suicidal ideation, please find free, confidential and localized support immediately at: findahelpline.com

No one should have to die alone and feeling worthless, especially by their own hands.  Anyone determined to die should be able to enter a health facility that serves two alternate purposes: to prevent suicides if possible without coercion, and otherwise to assist suicidal individuals to die with utmost dignity (after very stringent safeguards have been established).  Dying with utmost dignity means dying, not just humanely, but in the most ethically defensible and socially useful way possible.  This can be accomplished by, for example, linking assisted suicide with options for organ and body donations and/or contributions to suicide prevention research, in order to achieve two desirable outcomes: voluntary acts of regrettable self-destruction are transformed into final noble sacrifices which aim to save more lives than are lost ("good deaths" per the literal meaning of the related concept of "euthanasia"), while guilt or distress felt by suicidal individuals and their loved ones is consequently reduced.  Until legislatively authorized, assisted suicide under the above conditions should be recognized as a basic right "in principle," with subsequent expert inquiries focused on whether/how such a program could be implemented without undue risk of systemic exploitation or compromised autonomy — particularly for groups like seniors, youths, and incarcerated persons, who would be entitled to equal benefit from this program despite their vulnerability.

The recommended legislative change would be premised on at least three empirical hypotheses:

1. that a facility offering both suicide prevention services and assistance with altruistic dying would attract more potential suicide victims than a facility offering suicide prevention services alone — and yet would be successful in preventing the deaths of some of those additional potential victims;
2. that treatment-resistant clients who ultimately opt for altruistic suicide despite all reasonable efforts to dissuade them — including, very significantly, needed improvements in living conditions — would almost certainly have died from suicide anyway, and hence would be much better off dying under the proposed mitigating conditions;
3. that a consequence of this change would be a significant increase in body donations (through a separate process to avoid conflicts of interest) for research and organ transplantation, much of it life-saving, and more than offsetting the number of assisted suicides.

If proven accurate, these hypotheses would entail a Pareto improvement for potential victims of suicide (and the beneficiaries of organ transplants and of research), increasing their overall welfare without making any of them worse off. This argument parallels one for legalizing abortion: if the suicide or abortion would occur anyway, it is better for either to occur under supportive conditions that protect dignity and save more lives.

Opposition in principle to such an evident improvement would therefore be difficult to justify — whether in terms of consequentialism, autonomy, or fairness — and would instead seem to reflect moralized superstitions about death. Quoting the opening sentence of David Hume's Of Suicide, an early modern argument for altruistic suicide and its decriminalization, "One considerable advantage that arises from philosophy [or science] consists in the sovereign antidote which it affords to superstition and false religion."