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

In Hinduism, it is believed that one is only born in a body of a human after completing the duration of lives of others species. The human body is also considered the ultimate body and shouldn't be ended for any reasons

You're invoking karma and reincarnation to argue suicide wastes a rare privilege. But this actually undermines your own position. If the human birth is genuinely precious because it's earned through past lives, then shouldn't individuals have sovereignty over how they use it? A gift you didn't consent to receiving isn't truly yours to be controlled by others. Hindu texts also acknowledge suffering as real, not illusory. If someone's experiencing unbearable pain, telling them "you're wasting your earned body" sounds less like wisdom and more like spiritual coercion. Why should someone's hard-earned human existence be forfeited to satisfy your doctrine rather than their own judgment?

Firstly, there is no problem without a solution. Isn't ending your own life also causing yourself pain? What if, in an attempt to end a ones own life, they are not able to suicide, and instead get other permanent injuries?

You're conflating two separate problems. Yes, failed suicide attempts cause trauma, but that's an argument for better mental health support and access to painless methods, not against the right itself. Your "no problem without solution" claim is naive. Some suffering is chronic, treatment-resistant, and objectively unbearable. Telling someone in constant agony to just "find the solution" ignores reality. And here's the trap in your logic: if you're genuinely concerned about failed attempts causing harm, you're actually admitting the real issue isn't whether people should have the right, but whether society should help them do it safely. You've shifted the debate without noticing. Which is it: do you oppose the right itself, or just unsafe methods?

I oppose this right. Is this not self explanatory? What about the individual's loved ones, family member, friends, what about the. One attempt, and let alone successful man have an entire family suffering. Then it is all a chained reaction. The family starts suffering and then the used this so called right and end their lives and further on

You're weaponizing grief to deny autonomy. By that logic, people can't leave bad relationships, move away, or make any choice that upsets others without losing moral standing. Should we ban divorce because it causes family pain? Your "chain reaction" is speculative fear-mongering, not evidence. And here's what you're really saying: one person's suffering matters less than another's emotional discomfort. That's not ethics, it's coercion dressed as compassion. If you genuinely cared about preventing family devastation, you'd argue for better mental health systems and grief support, not imprisonment in suffering. You've prioritized others' feelings over someone's bodily autonomy. Why does their pain trump the person's own?

So, you are saying you would much rather have a and individual end his life and cause permanent and ongoing grief to his or her family rather than helping the individual in the first place.

You're strawmanning. I never said grief doesn't matter or that we shouldn't help people first. I said autonomy matters more than controlling someone through guilt. The real question you're dodging: what if someone has exhausted every treatment, therapy, and option? Do you still force them to suffer indefinitely to spare family feelings? That's not help, it's hostage-taking. Society should absolutely provide robust mental health support, palliative care, and crisis intervention. But if someone still chooses death after genuine attempts to live, overriding that choice isn't compassion. It's tyranny by consensus. You want to save lives without confronting the hardest case: when someone rationally wants to die despite good support. Can you even address that scenario honestly?

ok then,, picture this, A happy family where a man is the only one earning. For any reason, he looses his job and is not able to pay for the family, suicides, leaves the family in grief and devastation. And the family has no one earning in the family, so they " use their right" and end their lives.

You're describing a social failure, not an argument against autonomy. A man losing his job shouldn't be a death sentence because society failed to provide a safety net. That's a policy problem, not a rights problem. If your scenario terrifies you, fix the system: unemployment benefits, healthcare access, community support. Don't deny someone's right to die because your country abandoned them. And you're still assuming the family will follow suit without evidence. Most don't. You're using an extreme hypothetical to justify controlling living people. Why not address the actual crisis: poverty and lack of support? Or does controlling people feel easier than fixing society?