In most the United States, it is a crime to kill yourself. This is a gross encroachment of government into individual rights.
As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.” Thomas Jefferson echoed Mill when he wrote “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
Thirty thousand Americans successfully end their own lives every year. Three out of four of these Americans are men. The highest suicide rates are in men over 60 years of age.
These are not people who do not know what they are doing. These are not confused people who need government to tell them what to do. These are people who have made a conscious decision that they are done with life and it is their time to go. This is their choice and this is their right.
It’s time that we pushed the government out of our lives, and out of our deaths. The only thing a man can really own in this world is himself, and it’s time that we once again accept that we — not the government — own our own destinies.
