Debate: Assisted Suicide

By Jake and Glenn

Assisted suicide is a controversial issue, legally and morally.  If you type in J-A-C-K K-E- into Google, Jack Kevorkian is the number two result after Jack Kerouac.  This speaks to a renewed interest in finding doctors who will assist in your suicide and authors who will inspire you to try new things and drive across the country.  This week, Jake, an assisted suicide survivor, and Glenn, who has read “On The Road,” tackle this literally life-threatening issue.  At the end of the debate you can choose whose suicide you wish to assist.

Jake:  As The Beatles once sang “I get by with the help of my friends/I can die with the help of my friends.”  If a band as popular as The Beatles are for assisted suicide, then how can I oppose it?  Assisted suicide is the John Stockton of suicide.  Everybody loves John Stockton, so there is no logical reason that they should not also love assisted suicide.  I do not see what is morally wrong about a doctor or a neighbor aiding in suicide.  It is safer and less lonely than solo suicide.  Or is it the suicide part that people find morally reprehensible?  Look at it this way: we are all going to die one day.  Being against suicide is like being against death itself.  It is just a natural part of life.  


Glenn:  When David Bowie screams “I want to live!” at the end of the near ten minute long song “Cygnet Committee,” he is echoing our natural state.  We want to live and until something comes along to kill us, being alive is our natural state.  Assisted suicide is like someone creating a tsunami from a laboratory in the center of the Earth that goes on to kill you, your family and everyone you love - but you’ve asked for the tsunami first.  I know assisted suicide is a tempting idea to support--the person wants to be dead and society wants to get rid of disabled/terminally ill people.  But why should anyone get an assisted ride out?  I am forced to wake up every day in this awful place and the only hope for escape I have is winning the lottery or being killed in a random drive by shooting.  Let’s wait for the “gangbangers” to perform an assisted murder.

Jake:  Hoping to be shot is such an 1837 way to die.  This is 2012.  It is the future.  We should be more advanced than those filthy puritans that landed in this country and killed each other for practicing witchcraft.  Now, I’m not saying that witchcraft is okay, but that’s a different debate.  What I am saying, is that it is time for progress.  Men can sort of marry other men, you can download full seasons of uncut episodes of “ALF” off of torrent sites, a black man is president of this country and only some people think he’s from Kenya--so why don’t we add assisted suicide to that list?  It fits perfectly.  And to paraphrase the late Johnny Cochran, “If the [assisted] suicide fits you must...uh...quit [living].”

Glenn:  Some have accused OJ Simpson’s murder of Nicole Brown Simpson as the first legal assisted suicide of the 90s, under the assumption she was basically asking to be killed by having a relationship with another man.  I do not agree with this, nor do I agree with assisted suicide.  If someone has lost both his legs, he should not be killed by a doctor but given metal legs. If someone has lost both her arms, she should not be killed by a witch but given metal arms.  If someone is slowly losing all of his senses - like Ewan McGregor in the upcoming movie “Perfect Senses”--he should fall in love with a woman while it’s happening.  Love is much better than an assisted suicide.

Jake:  Just because I believe that people who are too cowardly to commit suicide should be able to get some assistance does not mean that I think assisted suicide is better than love or that OJ Simpson should be freed from prison for stealing his own possessions.  Assisted suicide is for those of us who are too blundering to take our own lives.  How many post-”The Naked Gun” Leslie Nielson movies did you seen in the theater in an attempt to end your own life?  Six?  Seven?  It just doesn’t work.  The late Dr. Jack Kevorkian knew how to really end a life and it sexually aroused him.  So what?  You should enjoy what you do for a living.  And so what if he had sexual intercourse with the freshly dead bodies?  It wasn’t hurting anybody.  Assisted suicide doesn’t hurt anybody.  It is absurd that it is looked down on in this country.  Anything that can whittle down the population is good, in my opinion.

Glenn:  Assisted suicide hurts EVERYONE.  It hurts the person who is killed.  It hurts the doctor/shaman who has to commit a reluctant murder.  It hurts our country because we get less money from the UN/One World Government when our suicide rate increases!  I empathize with the desire to die and I sympathize with those who cannot do it themselves.  But I’m pro-life.  This starts with the issue of abortion, which I oppose, and extends all the way to assisted suicide, which I also oppose.  I could no more support someone’s right to have a doctor kill them than I could a woman’s right to have a doctor kill her fetus.  3322 Fetal Americans are killed every day by abortions and the number of humans killed by assisted suicide is surely at least double that.  If you want to kill yourself, you can but at least have the decency to do it yourself - like the bravest Fetal Americans among us.