Everyone has the right to kill himself. No one has any business intervening to prevent you from disposing of what is ultimately and unarguably your property and no one elses. The state does not have that right, your relatives don’t, the church doesn’t, not even society. And certainly not some glib moralist who has decided to be judgmental and condemn you for taking that decision because they have decided that you aren’t tough or brave enough. It is the ultimate freedom, in fact, it is probably the only real freedom we have: to choose how we die. I hope when my time comes, I’ll have the courage as well the ability to choose for myself.

Having said that, some of the posts below argue very convincingly that the urge to suicide is very often a disease, a mental dysfunction or even a physiological illness, the absence of some brain chemical or some hormonal imbalance. Some suicides may be treatable, like the flu. If Mr Williams could have been saved by some doctor recognizing he had a vitamin deficiency or by some minor brain surgery it certainly would have been justifiable to step in and “cure” him. People who are suicidal because they are sick may not have the right to suicide, and perhaps intervention is appropriate. But judging exactly where that line is is not easy given our medical ignorance, and it should not be made more complicated by clouding the issue with cheap, self-righteous prejudices or smug value judgments. Sooner or later, its a decision we all have to make for ourselves.

To cavalierly declare that someone who commits suicide is just a coward is as thoughtlessly brutal and thuggish as to say that someone who is sick deserves it for not taking better care of themselves, or that the poor deserve to suffer poverty because they are lazy and stupid. Even if it were true, no one has the right to say that about someone else from the comfortable shelter of their own sanity, prosperity or health.