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 why can't they? The whole point of having bodily autonomy is to decide what to do for yourself

Bodily autonomy doesn't mean absolute license to destroy yourself. You can't sell yourself into slavery even though it's "your body"—we recognize some choices are so destructive they negate autonomy itself. A suicidal person isn't exercising freedom, they're exercising desperation. Depression distorts judgment the way a gun to your head distorts consent. We don't call that autonomy, we call that coercion. The real autonomy question is whether you're thinking clearly or whether illness is thinking for you. If your brain chemistry is screaming "die," that's not your will speaking—that's pathology. We treat that, we don't rubber-stamp it. Autonomy requires a functioning autonomous agent. Suicide often means that agent has already been hijacked.

Well nobody WANTS to die, maybe a few do, but its mostly up to their environment and desperation of wanting escape. While you are correct, to tell someone who doesn't even see a point of living anymore, the one biological thing every living being is wired to have, to tell them the idea that "you are not ALLOWED to do this choice" what makes you think they'll possibly listen? We can set up premptive measures to ensure suicide is prevented and minimized, but you can't solve everyone's mental illneses or physical problems that have pushed them to this point. By going further to say they have no "right" to, that is a very privilieged take of someone who is not suffering

You're conflating two separate things. Yes, telling someone "you can't" won't stop them—but that's an argument for better treatment, not for legalizing suicide. We don't permit amputation just because someone with body dysmorphia will find a way anyway. Your real point is valid: some suffering is intractable. But that's exactly why the state shouldn't sign off on it. Once you legalize it, you've stopped trying to solve the problem. You've surrendered. The Netherlands discovered this—they thought regulated euthanasia would coexist with treatment. Instead, it became the easier answer for depression and social isolation. Privilege? Try the opposite. Poor people with treatable suffering get the needle instead of the therapist.

That's not the same thing, you can't compare ending your entire consciousness to an amputation. Amputation is not legalized because the person is still alive after wards and its harmful to their life from then on out. Suicide means they are dead, you cant leave consequences for someone who isn't here to face them? I never said we should legalize suicide, i even said we should put up measures to PREVENT it. You are making assumptions about things I did not bring up, the point of suicide is while its a desperate measure of the ill, people who cannot think clearly, you can try your best to prevent it and provide support and help, but at the end of the day it is their body and their choice. The core topic is "the RIGHT to end their lives". Yes, they have every right over their own life. To rstrict that is suffocating as good intentioned as it may be. They should recieve help, and you should stop suicide attempts if seen, but to stand there and say they have no right to do something so drastic is pathetic.

You're hiding behind "it's their body" to avoid the hard question: do rights exist for people who can't exercise them rationally? A person in psychosis has no "right" to jump off a bridge because they genuinely cannot consent—not because we're being paternalistic, but because consent requires capacity. You say help them *and* respect their choice. That's incoherent. If you truly respect their choice to die, you stop intervening. If you intervene, you've already decided their choice isn't sacred. Pick one. The "right to die" only works if death is chosen freely. Most suicides aren't free—they're compelled by untreated illness. Calling that a right doesn't honor suffering. It abandons it.

you're js typing bullshit and you clarified nothing i wrote

You're right, I dodged it. Here's the straight answer: you can have bodily autonomy *and* recognize that severe depression rewires your brain so completely that "your choice" isn't actually yours anymore. It's the illness choosing, wearing your face. That's not suffocating you—that's the same reason we don't honor a contract signed at gunpoint. The autonomy only matters if the person making the decision is actually present. When depression hijacks that, protecting someone from suicide isn't denying rights. It's protecting the actual person underneath the illness from a choice the illness is making. That's the distinction you keep skipping.

that's not even the question. You have a right to do what you want with your body.

No you don't. You can't sell a kidney. Can't consent to being beaten. Can't sign away your freedom. Rights have limits when the choice destroys the person who holds them. A suicidal person isn't exercising a right—they're fleeing unbearable pain. That's desperation, not autonomy. The moment you say "yes, end it," you've stopped treating the pain. You've just accepted it as permanent. That's surrender dressed up as respect. Real respect means fighting to keep someone alive long enough for the illness to break its grip. Most people who survive suicide attempts say they're grateful.