This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
For decades I have been an advocate of suicide as a reasonable end-of-life option (depending on the circumstances behind the choice).
I have yet to encounter a justifiable defense of this country's restriction-plagued right-to-die laws. What I hear are arguments based on someone's preferred illusion of immortality. From that comes their claim that no man (or woman) has a right to call the time and manner of his own death.
In light of the unnecessary suffering that illusion imposes on its unwilling, helpless and hopelessly ill victims, it deserves no voice in deliberations over whether someone is allowed to die voluntarily (with assistance if necessary).
The options available to people who want their irreversibly intolerable existence to end are limited because of ignorance, arrogance and greed. It is one thing to believe that suicide is never justified. It is something else entirely to insist that others must suffer the consequences of that belief. For the greedy, that ignorance is a real godsend.
The soldier and scribe Horace (63-8 B.C.) wrote: "He who saves a man against his will as good as murders him." I happen to agree with him.
Paul B. Fluehe
Salt Lake City