Sister Y has sound reasoning on the suicide issue. In this entry, she discusses the reason why anti-suicide laws hurt society as a whole.
1. People who attempt suicide and fail are often imprisoned in a hospital as a result.
2. People who attempt suicide are forcibly “rescued” and brought back to life against their will, if possible – sometimes to a state of very low quality of life, such as akinetic mutism.
3. Those who express a desire to commit suicide are often imprisoned in a hospital as a result; this process is much more humiliating and degrading than outsiders might realize.
4. The drug prohibition (drug war) means that barbiturates are unavailable – barbiturates being the only means of suicide considered humane enough to be used in states that allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill people.
5. Helping another person to commit suicide is prosecuted as a crime in all but the most limited situations in the few states that allow physician-assisted suicide. Suicide is the only act that is not itself a crime, but which assisting another person to commit is a crime.
The Prime Directive 
I was just reading it the other day :) She has so many good entries dealing exclusively with the subject. Music to my ears :)
I totally agree with her. As someone who is suicidal by default, I stand behind her every word.
Here’s what she said in her interview:
“But, to me, the fun and interest in the world do not do a bit to make up for pain. This is a feature of my psychology, and has nothing to do with the much-debated Benatar asymmetry – but it’s true, neither emotional joy nor physical pleasure nor intellectual epiphany take the slightest sting away from pain and suffering. Suffering is psychologically salient, to me, and memories of pain, and expectation of pain, are psychologically available to me in a way that pleasurable memories or expectations can never be. The one simply does not weigh against the other (psychologically, and also in the wider sense of value). I don’t write about this, because I don’t think it’s interesting and I’m not sure this idiosyncrasy of my psychology is widely shared. The non-suicidal people I know, at least, do not share this experience. But it is the core of mine. No psychiatric drug has ever changed this for me.”
It seems to me that Sister Y only wants freedom of choice when it jives with her own desires. In other areas, its fine http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.ca/2012/07/the-right-to-marry.html?showComment=1343853456522#c7455686911050863422 to impose a certain conception of the good life.
HAHAHAHA… you linked to my comment on there. Well done. :)
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