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

NO, because it is written in the Constitution that "our rights are endowed by Our Creator with unalienable rights, the right to LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is illegal to take one's own life because they are breaking the law and violating their own right to live, this right goes for everyone including oneself. On a philisophical basis, We are all made in the image of God who is portrayed as "Our Creator" in the constitution, so our lives are not even our own, now although our creator gives us the freedom to take our life he does not give us permission or a right too.

You're quoting the *Declaration of Independence*, not the Constitution—already your foundation crumbles. More critically, you've created a logical trap: if life is an "unalienable right," you can't violate your own right by exercising autonomy over it. That's incoherent. Rights protect *your* agency, not constrain it. And your God argument contradicts itself—if the Creator grants free will, denying someone the right to choose death means *denying* the freedom God allegedly gave them. You can't invoke divine freedom and then forbid its exercise. Which is it: do we have autonomy or don't we?

You're confusing freedom and license; license is the freedom to do whatever you want. I am sure you agree that no one should be able to murder someone, as it is clearly stated in the law. If you agree that murder is wrong, why is it not wrong for anyone to murder themselves? And there is no contradiction with my God argument, like I said; freedom is not license; when God gives free will, it means he gives anyone the decision to both obey or disobey him. Now that person who does obey him will answer to Justice, but he has still completely voluntarily exercised his free will by committing an injustice. But it is unjust to take one's own life, which is just based on simply ethics.

You're equivocating on "murder." Murder is unjustified killing of *another person*—it violates their autonomy. Killing yourself violates nobody's autonomy but your own. These aren't morally equivalent. Your ethics argument is circular: you assert self-killing is "unjust" without proving why. If God gave free will, then choosing death *is* exercising that will, not violating it. Disobeying God doesn't make the choice less free—it makes it free. You can't simultaneously claim free will exists and claim certain free choices are categorically forbidden. That's not ethics, that's just assertion masquerading as principle.

Rights serve as the rules about what is allowed or owed according to legal, social, or ethical principles. You asked me to prove why self-killing is "unjust." Just simply based on rights, one does not have the Right to end their life, which is clearly stated in the law. Also, again, one cannot kill himself because his life is not his own, so you're wrong to say that killing yourself violates nobody's autonomy, because it violates God's gift of life, which he has commanded shall not be taken by anybody, including yourself. Yes, one has the free will to take their own life, but again you ignored the distinction between license and true freedom. You can claim that free will exists and claim certain choices exercised with complete voluntary action are forbidden because then we get into morality and ethics. You free will to do unjust things, but that does not make it just. And what is your definition of justice then? You also claim that killing another person violates their autonomy, but what is their autonomy based on? Do we just make up rights and decide who gets them and who doesn't? Are rights natural or simply man-made?

You're circular again. "Life isn't yours because God owns it" assumes what you need to prove. If God commanded "don't kill," He also gave you the capacity to disobey—that's the free will you keep invoking. You can't have it both ways. Your "justice" claim collapses too: you define justice as "obeying God's commands," then use that definition to prove suicide is unjust. That's not argument, it's repetition. On rights: yes, they're natural—rooted in autonomy and self-determination. Your life belongs to *you* because you're the only one living it. God's gift doesn't negate recipient ownership. You still haven't answered why someone else's autonomy matters but yours doesn't.

You said that natural rights are rooted in self-determination, so does that mean that if I have the self-determination to kill someone or establish a law that grants me that, I have the right to do that? Then Justice is arbitrary, completely subjective, and has no universality. And if Justice is subjective, then you can go around killing anyone you like, and I am sure you do not agree with that stance because natural rights are built on more than just self-determination and autonomy. Yes, Justice does point to God's commandments because all his commandments are just. Why? Because God is the moral lawgiver who established Justice. Now Justice, as the ancient philosophers have defined it, can be "giving to each his due" and "the ultimate human virtue and the foundation of a flourishing political community." And the reason America has flourished is that the law has been built on Justice, not simply built on one's own determination. And part of the law is the self-preservation of oneself as well as all others. Because life is a sacred gift from God, he retains ultimate authority over it, including its beginning and end. And so because we have not created our own lives, we do not have the right to destroy them.

You've just proven my point. You admit natural rights need constraints—murder violates *others'* autonomy, so it's forbidden. But suicide violates only *your own* autonomy. The logic doesn't apply. You can't invoke "giving each his due" to justify denying someone authority over their own life. And your God argument still fails: if God retains ultimate authority, then *He* decides who lives and dies, not the state. Yet you want *law* to enforce God's will. That's not justice—that's theocracy. If God's authority is absolute, why do you need human law to protect life He already controls? The contradiction swallows your entire position.

Yes, God does decide who lives and dies, and the state which inacts human laws, which are bound by natural law. reflects God's law because God established natural law. All human laws are bound by and are made to reflect natural law, as our Founding Fathers and John Locke cleary states.

You're invoking natural law to escape the contradiction, but it doesn't work. If God controls life and death absolutely, then human law protecting life is redundant—God doesn't need legislation. If human law *is* necessary, then the state makes binding moral decisions independent of God's will. You can't have both. And here's the killer: natural law theorists like Locke argued individuals retain rights *against* the state. Self-determination is foundational to natural law. You're using Locke to justify *restricting* the very autonomy Locke defended. The Founders built on individual liberty, not state-enforced obedience. Your position betrays the very tradition you're citing.