In recent years we have wit­nessed a growing tendency to pro­mote suicide as a way of resolving end-stage suffering. Physician-as­sisted suicide is now legal in a hand­ful of states and a number of other jurisdictions are considering laws to legalize the practice. A few years ago on Nightline, Barbara Wal­ters interviewed an assisted suicide advo­cate who summed it up this way: “We’re talking about what peo­ple want. There are people who, even suffering horribly, want to live out every second of their lives, and that’s their right, of course, and they should do it. Others don’t want that. Oth­ers want out!”

Those favoring physician-as­sisted suicide argue that getting out of our final agony means essentially redeem­ing a “get out of jail free” card through committing suicide. At first glance, taking this step would in­deed appear to end our troubles defini­tively. But what if this view of things is dead wrong, and we don’t actu­ally end up escaping our suffer­ings? What if we, instead, end up in a new situation where our trials are still present, and maybe even more in­tense, on account of the willful deci­sion we made to end our own life?

I was recently reminded of this serious flaw in the “suicide solu­tion” after watching a re­marka­ble video adaptation of Shake­speare’s tragedy Hamlet, with Camp­bell Scott co-directing and star­ring in the title role. Lis­tening once again to Hamlet’s timeless solilo­quy “to be or not to be,” I was struck by how carefully Shake­speare ad-dresses the vexing ques­tion of intense human suf­fering and the perennial tempta­tion to com­mit suicide.  

Hamlet muses about wheth-er it is better to put up with the bad things we know about in this life than to step into the strange new land of death's "undiscov-ered coun­try," a country about which we know very little, and from which no one returns. This leaves us, in Hamlet’s words, “puzzled” and in “dread of something after death.” He won­ders aloud about the hidden pur­poses of suffering when he asks himself, “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous for­tune” than to “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by oppos­ing, end them.” He con­cludes by asking whether we shouldn’t rather “bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?”

Among those who end up commit­ting suicide, whether physi­cian-assisted or otherwise, many will face extenuating circumstances in­clud­ing severe depression or other forms of extreme mental pain. In such cases, it is clear that their moral responsibil­ity will be greatly dimin­ished, as fear and anguish constrict their ability to think and reason clearly. But this is not always the case, and some people, with clear mind and di­rected intention, do choose to end their lives, as appears to have been the case for Britney Maynard. She was the young woman in Cali­fornia who in the early stages of her brain cancer care­fully arranged and orchestrated her own physician-as­sisted suicide, establish­ing months in advance the date and setting, who would be pre­sent in the room, what music would be play­ing as she did it, etc.

Such a decision is always a trag­edy, and every life, even when com­pro­mised by disease or suffering, re­mains a great gift to be cared for. When freely chosen, suicide is a form of serious wrongdoing and is, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,             

“Gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neigh­bor because it un­justly breaks the ties of solidarity with fam­ily, nation, and other human socie­ties to which we continue to have obligations.” 

It leaves behind loved ones to con­tend with unresolved guilt, shame, and pain.

While ending our life may seem to offer an “escape valve” for the seri­ous pressures and sufferings we face, we do well to consider the real effects of this choice both in this life, and in the life to come. In the next life, a preced­ing act of suicide may deny us the very relief we were seek­ing, and may, in fact, lead to harsher purifica­tion in a new situation of our own mak­ing, or, heaven forbid, lead to a fate far worse than purgatory.

Our Lord and his Church care pro­foundly for those who commit sui­cide, and even though this act clearly in­volves grave matter, the Catechism re­minds us that, 

“We should not despair of the eter­nal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salu­tary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”

Suicide affects us not only in the here and now, but has significant, even eter­nal, implications for the journey to that “undiscovered coun­try” that awaits us.

 Copyright © 2020, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, Philadelphia, PA. All rights reserved.