Suicide | Introduction
In May 1996, the U.S. Navy’s top admiral, Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, committed suicide when he learned that Newsweek magazine wanted to question him about the legitimacy of two of his medals. Earlier in his career, Boorda had worn “V” pins (for valor) on two medals, indicating that he had served under fire during the Vietnam War. Although Boorda served in the Vietnam theater, his medal citations did not authorize him to wear the “V” pins. Boorda stopped wearing the pins about a year before his death when a friend pointed out that he was not entitled to wear them. According to Boorda’s suicide note, wearing the pins was an honest mistake.
Much of the nation was shocked over Boorda’s suicide; many felt it was an irrational overreaction to a minor mistake that had been corrected.Yet others—especially those who have served in the military—believed his suicide was the honorable way out of a potential scandal. Peter J. Boyer of the New Yorker editorialized that Boorda died “a warrior’s death” because he feared the Newsweek exposé would bring dishonor on the navy in which he had served for forty years.
Choosing death before dishonor is seen by some philosophers and ethicists as a rational reason to commit suicide. According to these experts, committing suicide can be a rational, morally permissible, and sometimes even obligatory act. Victor Cosculluela, author of The Ethics of Suicide, contends that suicide is rational and permissible if it serves as an expression of one’s deepest values or as an escape from an unbearable existence. Suicide is obligatory, he continues, if it will protect others from death or suffering, such as a soldier falling on a grenade or a pilot crashing a disabled plane into a hill to avoid a field full of children.
Many health care professionals agree that suicide can be a rational decision if certain conditions are met. A 1995 study by James L.Werth and Debra C. Cobia found that 88 percent of two hundred psychologists they surveyed supported the concept of rational suicide if the person considering suicide has a terminal illness, is in severe physical or psychological pain, or is experiencing an unacceptable quality of life and freely chooses to die. The researchers also stipulate that in order for a decision to commit suicide to be considered rational, the individual must have met with a mental health professional, weighed all the alternatives, considered how the act would affect others, and consulted with friends, family members, and clergy.
But other health care professionals believe that suicide can never be a rational choice. Leon R. Kass, an ethicist, physician, and outspoken critic of the right-to-die movement, argues that the determination to kill oneself is often made in response to feelings of guilt, fear, despair, or rejection. Suicide in these situations may be understandable and even forgivable, he asserts, but it is still an irrational and emotional response. Furthermore, because death is unimaginable, Kass contends, one cannot accurately judge whether death would be preferable to life. Therefore, he concludes, to choose death cannot possibly be a rational decision:
Do we know what we are talking about when we claim that someone can rationally choose nonbeing or nothingness? How can poor reason even contemplate nothingness, much less accurately calculate its merits as compared with continued existence?
Author Joyce Carol Oates agrees: “Rationally one cannot ‘choose’ Death because Death is an unknown experience, and perhaps it isn’t even an ‘experience’—perhaps it is simply nothing; and one cannot imagine nothing.” Oates and Kass assert that the merits of other actions can be imagined because it is possible to discuss them with people who have experienced them; death, however, is totally unknowable.
Others contend that choosing death as an escape from life’s troubles is cowardly and selfish. For example, some maintain that Boorda’s suicide was a cowardly act because he did not consider how his action would affect his wife, his children, and his reputation. Pat Smith, who wrote a letter to Newsweek, asks,
What is honorable, manly or brave about shooting yourself rather than taking the heat for your own deliberate actions? What regard did he show for his wife and children, wounding their hearts with his death?
Others concur, arguing that Boorda’s suicide and the circumstances surrounding it were more dishonorable than the act of wearing medals he did not deserve.
Whether Boorda’s decision to commit suicide was rational and honorable or cowardly and irrational, his death was just one of an estimated thirty-one thousand suicides in 1996. As the number of suicides continues to increase each year, society struggles to understand and respond to this troubling trend. The authors in Suicide: Opposing Viewpoints examine ethical and legal issues as well as arguments concerning the cause and prevention of suicide in the following chapters: Is Suicide an Individual Right? What Are the Causes of Teen Suicide? Should Assisted Suicide Be Legal? How Can Suicide Be Prevented? The contributors to these chapters shed light on the emotional and sensitive issues involved in the national discussion on suicide.
