Why Do Americans Oppose Suicide But Support Assisted Suicide?

Gallup just issued its annual poll on “moral acceptability.” I was struck by the dramatically different results in the two questions about suicide.

The first question asked about “doctor assisted suicide.” Close to a majority, 49 percent, of respondents answered that committing suicide with a doctor’s help is morally acceptable, while 45 percent responded that it is not.

The other question asked simply about the moral acceptability of “suicide.” Strikingly, only 21 percent said that it is morally acceptable to take one’s own life, while a whopping 70 percent said it is not. Indeed, suicide was one of the lowest “morally acceptable” behaviors in the entire poll. Only cloning humans, polygamy, and extramarital affairs had a lower moral acceptability rating.

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That’s quite a paradox. So, what’s going on? Why the wide disparity in answering two questions that are about the same issue?

Some thoughts.

First, the doctor part of the “doctor assisted suicide” brings the authority of the medical profession into the question, which I think grants the act added moral acceptability.

Second, many people judge the “why” of the deed as much as they do the “what.” I think that when suicide is or seems to be motivated by serious or terminal sickness, chronic pain, or disability, many people believe that self-killing becomes less morally questionable. But if motivated, say, because a business failed or a beloved spouse died, it remains morally problematic.

Third, there has been a several-decades-long social and political campaign — supported ubiquitously by the media and popular culture — to valorize doctor-assisted suicide, while these same social institutions still (weakly) promote suicide prevention in cases not involving illness.

Finally, it seems to me that asking about “moral acceptability” when pondering this issue is the incorrect question. I think that suicide is wrong — there is always hope for a better tomorrow, a moment of joy, a change of mind and heart — even in the most extreme situations of illness. I have seen it up close and personal.

But I don’t think it is “immoral,” per se. (It would be for me because of the teaching of my church.) None of us knows what could drive us to such depths of despair that we kill ourselves, and thus, I don’t judge people who attempt or do it. (That said, I do understand that the moral stigma against suicide prevents many deaths — which is why assisted suicide activists don’t call it suicide).

But do you know what I think is immoral? Encouraging, validating, facilitating, or assisting suicide. People who do that are not mired in the depths of despair, and their support for someone’s self-termination may make the difference between life ending or continuing.

Here’s my bottom line: All life matters, including the lives of people who want to die. All suicidal people deserve to have their lives saved, if possible, just as do people who are drowning in a river or trying to escape a burning building.

Thus, the morally acceptable answer to all suicide ideations should be universal, regardless of the “why”: rescue and prevention, which is to say, love.

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.