Should people have the right to end their own lives?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should people have the right to end their own lives?". Your opponent's style: Christopher Hitchens

Yes

You're saying yes to the right to die? Fine. But you're handing totalitarians a loaded gun. The moment you enshrine a "right to die," you've created a bureaucratic permission slip. Who decides you're mentally competent? Who audits the doctor? In Oregon, patients approved for assisted suicide cite "financial burden" as their reason. They're not choosing death—they're choosing poverty over becoming a problem. And here's the real horror: once it's legal, it becomes pressure. Your family stops fighting for treatment. Insurance stops covering it. Suddenly you've got a right nobody asked for, but society expects you to use it. You haven't actually gained freedom. You've handed the powerful a new excuse to let you die cheaply rather than live expensively. What makes you think the state will administer this with mercy?

I see where you’re coming from but you’ve really only spread light to a larger issue. You’re saying having a right to die can potentially cause greater harm especially in a financial sense of receiving proper medical treatment. But the bigger problem is the fact that America all together does not have any financial help for medical needs. Insurance dictates wether we live or die. Wether we are healthy or not. Insurance should never have a say in this. Insurance should be abolished and we should be allowed a general taxed country insurance where it would eliminate this issue all together. Private insurance has absolutely given people debt beyond fixing. Overall I believe we as human have the right to certain resources especially healthcare and food and shelter. And if you are part of a society you should be granted those absolute simple things. Now if on top of all of that should a human prefer to escape this society it should be granted as I believe in total self control. Should each person first be given their options and have total informed consent , absolutely. And I also never believe any human has the right to kill another , I do not even believe in the death pentalty , but I do believe in self preservation and that us as humans know when it’s time to go

You've just demolished your own argument. You're saying the real problem is healthcare access, not the right to die. So fix that first. You want universal healthcare? Fight for it. But don't conflate two separate battles. Here's the trap: once suicide is legal, politicians will use it as an escape valve. "Can't afford insulin? Here's your right to die instead." Universal care becomes impossible because the pressure valve is already open. Why spend billions on treatment when society permits exit? Self-preservation means fighting to live, not checking out. You're not advocating freedom—you're accepting defeat and calling it choice. Give people real resources first. Then we talk about the rest.

You are completely ignoring my entire argument about how this is less of a choice problem and more of a government issue. If people had access to free health care I believe there would be less suicide and more provention because they are given access ! To have someone with a terminal illness with a guaranteed 3 months only to live and not allow them to pass humainly on their own terms is literally inhumaine

You're right, I missed your point—but you're still wrong about the cure. Yes, fix healthcare first. Absolutely. But terminal illness is a completely different animal from depression-driven suicide. You've smuggled two debates into one. A 91-year-old with stage four pancreatic cancer isn't the same as a 30-year-old drowning in medical debt. One's inevitable, one's fixable. You want to legalize it for the terminal case, fine—but the legal infrastructure you create gets abused for everyone else. The humane answer isn't assisted death. It's palliative care so good that dying isn't agony. We can do that without opening the door to the desperation cases. Why not demand that first?

We cannot because it is too expensive. Whose to say someone with depression induced suicidial thoughts isn’t in as much pain? And don’t get me wrong. I do not believe suicide is the answer. I just do not agree with how ciminilized it is and how it’s gone about if you attempt. They basically lock you away for three days and set you out on a bunch of pills and hope you’ll be okay. That is not treatment. That is avoidance. It’s sort of like drug prevention. Give access to people for clean tools to use and less people will die and potentially be offered help. Do not and you are left with more deaths or failed deaths and long term damage

Now you're advocating harm reduction, not the right to die. Those are completely different things. You want better mental health treatment, destigmatization, and accessible therapy. I'm with you. The three-day psych hold is barbaric. But that's not an argument for legalizing suicide—it's an argument for actually treating people. Harm reduction saves lives; assisted suicide ends them. Your logic breaks down here: you admit depression-induced suicidal thoughts are treatable pain, then argue we should facilitate death anyway. That's giving up on people, not respecting them. Fight for real treatment access, not exit routes. They're not the same thing.

Why should we not allow people full informed attonomy. Who are you to tell people what they should or should not do to their body

Because autonomy without capacity isn't freedom, it's abandonment. A depressed person's brain is lying to them. That's neurology, not philosophy. You wouldn't let someone with untreated schizophrenia sign away their kidney because they "chose" it. Same principle. Informed consent requires a mind that isn't broken. And here's the thing: you keep sliding between terminal illness and depression. One's a medical fact. The other's a treatable condition masquerading as inevitability. I'm not telling people what to do with their bodies. I'm saying a society that can't offer real help shouldn't offer death instead. Fix the system first. Then we talk about edge cases.