My name is Zoe Jacobs. I am 23 years old, originally from Montclair NJ, and have been living in Manhattan on the Upper West Side for the last 2 years.

I am writing this out of pure revulsion for the circumstances I find myself, and many others, placed in. Revulsion is far too mild a word, but it will have to do nonetheless. This is not an essay I would have ever have thought I'd be forced to write, but someone needs to stick their neck out and speak on this cruelty, and I cannot rest easy without doing so.

Growing up in a very progressive town, it is practically assumed that any compassionate, rational person is pro-choice--meaning they believe every woman has the right to decide what is best for her own body and her own life, and that she deserves to be able to access safe, efficient medical care to help her make these choices should she become pregnant. It is also understood--and has been demonstrated throughout our country's history--that attempts to restrict/criminalize abortion have not led to a reduction in the amount of women seeking them, but have merely forced them to resort to painful, highly dangerous, and unreliable methods (such as backalley abortions or "the coat hanger"). This is widely considered by most rational and compassionate people (should your mind not be too clouded by religious dogma) to be inhumane, and a grotesque violation of basic civil rights to bodily autonomy.

You may disagree if you are religious. That is fine, but your beliefs are just that—*your* beliefs—and you have absolutely no right to inflict them on anyone else. I know this sounds trite, but unfortunately it is something a lot of people still have trouble accepting on any level. It should come as no surprise, considering the puritanical history of our country, that 90% of the arguments against abortion have religious roots, even if they don't seem to on the surface. Underlying the idea that a woman does not have the right to an abortion is:

1) She does not have full ownership of her own body (God does)

2) "Life"--in any form-- must be preserved at all costs, regardless of the intensity or length of suffering involved.

Here's where the controversy starts: this is not an essay about abortion.

Listed above are also the presuppositions that underly the fascistic suicide prevention strategies which currently enjoy overwhelmingly widespread cultural approval.

To paraphrase Maija Haavisto, suicide is so confusing and tragic that people usually cannot even begin to have a rational discussion on it. We are allowed to bypass logic entirely and head straight for the screechy platitudes should anyone even bring up euthanasia for terminally ill elders, much less anyone in a less "dire" situation. Early in my life, after learning about my own grandfather's and my second cousin's suicides (which happened long before I was born) even I fell quickly into some of these incredibly misguided lines of reasoning. I believe that's why they have persevered—so we can just slap a shallow and dismissive explanation on this deviant behavior and not have to think about it too deeply beyond that; to put a gulf between us and those who would try to give back the gift of life.

These platitudes are nothing new, and they've been debunked and argued against many times, but you probably haven't read those so I will go through them one more time for you:

The most common reflexive statement is "suicide is selfish." This is an old standby, and it works especially well at making suicidal people feel bad because it's just pure manipulation and emotional blackmail. Another variation is "suicide doesn't end the pain, it just passes it on to other people." What people are conveying when they say this is "your own choice to end the body and life that you didn't choose but nevertheless own would make me very sad for a while, therefore you must stick around and endure, indefinitely, whatever suffering you should naturally be subjected to in this life." It seems painfully obvious that THIS is an incredibly selfish sentiment, and a fantastically manipulative one too. Just as no one is obligated to stay in a relationship simply because leaving would make the other person greatly unhappy, no one is obligated to stay in this life because of the prospective inconvenience or grief of others. Should one take other's feelings into account when making such a decision? Yes, sure. But ultimately, these accusations of selfishness reveal themselves to be nothing more than projection.

I know this seems like a diminishment of surviving family's grief, and I don't intend for it to be that, as I am very sympathetic to the pain of losing a loved one in this way. I myself have agonized over it endlessly when it comes to my own family/friends. But using guilt-tripping and manipulation to force your loved one to stick around in a place they have no desire to be is not love and it's certainly not compassion. It's a perfectly understandable and human impulse, but it has no place in the discussion of whether people have the right to end their own lives.

"Suicide is the coward's way out." Again, I find myself reiterating what Maija Haavisto so eloquently pointed out: objectively, there is nothing cowardly about suicide. Our innate survival instincts are an incredibly strong force that can even stop people who have every reason in the world to end their lives. To overcome such a basic evolutionary instinct—an instinct that has caused people to sabotage attempts while fully unconscious—takes tremendous willpower, resolution, and yes, in a way, courage (be careful not to confuse courage with heroism). And not to even mention the fact that most suicides will, unfortunately, due to pro-life attitudes and legislation, be incredibly violent and painful. To commit an act of violence against yourself that you know will end your life is one of the most challenging and horrid experiences a person can undertake. Heaped on even further is the threat of failure and ending up in even worse condition--unable to even make another attempt, possibly--and this person is facing one of the scariest sets of circumstances imaginable to the human brain. Alone. Because telling anyone about the situation would either implicate that person in a crime or get them locked up.

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem". This one truly doesn't make sense on any level, but has nonetheless stuck around because it's catchy and *sounds* like it should be true. Suicide brings forth the end, so it's a permanent solution, and a lot of problems in life are temporary, right? Therefore, a permanent solution is inappropriate for a problem that would otherwise go away, no? Case closed?

First of all, how incredibly condescending and just plainly obnoxious to automatically write off people's ills as "temporary", as if chronic pain--physical and/or mental-- are as transient and bearable as a stubbed toe. If you are the kind of person who goes around saying this, trust that any suicidal people in your life will not feel comfortable confiding in you like you claim to want them to. People kill themselves for as many reasons as there are individuals on this planet, and most would not turn to an already terrifying prospect that lawmakers do everything in their power to make as terrifying and shameful as possible if they had any reason to think things would improve soon.

And regardless, it is almost comical how suicide being a permanent solution is positioned to be a *bad* thing here. The experience of dying can be and often is a "bad thing"**** for all involved, but once someone is dead any speculation about where their life could have gone is just that—speculation. It is bittersweet to think of all the positive paths someone could have gone down *if only.* When we beg people to get help "if they're thinking about hurting themselves," we often don't think about their circumstances beyond their call to the suicide hotline and the inevitable few weeks in the psych ward. Maybe we assume that this will catalyze access to the proper psychiatric and psychological care they've been missing all along and with a little elbow grease and patience, they will be able to turn things around and this will just be a small and unfortunate blip in the grand scheme of their long, productive lives.

If you're going to forcibly detain someone for their attempts to control their own fate, take away their property, and then hand them a bill for services rendered fully against their will as if they should be thankful to you…you better have the ANSWER waiting for them inside there. Your "solutions" better be the cure, because only then can it be considered completely irrational for them to give up on life. If you are going to forcibly deny someone's right to end their own pain and suffering, then you better have the antidote for that aforementioned pain and suffering—in all its complexities—and it better be accessible to all. Does that sound unreasonable? Too bad. If you want to lock people up you are voluntarily taking up this mantle of ending their suffering in an alternate fashion, and the current interventions are far from adequate. Otherwise, you are nothing more— and to be sure, you are nothing more—than a jailkeeper.

So, back to the "it gets better" carrot and stick. Here's what no one tells you about these feel-good "what if" scenarios:

1. Most of the people who attempt or complete suicide have had recent psychiatric and medical care

2. The chances that things will get worse is comparable, if not much higher, than the chances that things will get better

I know that sounds horribly cynical and like I'm just encouraging everyone to abandon all hope because life is an unendurable wasteland, but that's only because I don't have the time nor patience to constantly acknowledge and reaffirm the same optimistic messages you've no doubt been exposed to hundreds of times. Yes, we all know life can get better in some cases and that hope can be a worthy pursuit.

In my view, when a person decides to take their own life, they have decided that the effort and struggle necessary for an unpromised "better" does not feel worthwhile or even doable in the face of the pain they are currently experiencing and can reasonably expect to experience in the future. You may dismiss this as laziness, or defeatism, or—most commonly— irrationality brought on by mental imbalance, to which I would ask what makes you qualified to diminish someone's objective experiences and the subjective suffering conferred from them.

You may even be able to point to a bunch of people who had suicidal ideation or even attempted suicide, who are now leading happy, productive lives with a profound gratefulness that they did not succeed in taking their own lives. Those people exist, of course, and they deserve to tell their stories.

But I would ask, then: have you simply forgotten that for every person who feels they've "recovered", there is another on their fourth suicide attempt who desperately wishes they succeeded the first time? How much suffering—how many years of indescribable agony, how many attempts to claw their way out of their own life—do you and your tribunal deem necessary? You've shown that no amount will suffice. You would happily keep these people locked up indefinitely as in your view, quantity of life can never be sacrificed for quality of life. Just as the Christian pro-lifers scream outside the abortion clinics, life must be protected at absolutely any cost of human suffering.

II.

One interesting part of this "debate", if you could even call it that, is how some disability advocates are so passionately against any expansion of euthanasia laws. They fear allowing people self-determination and control of their own pain will be a slippery slope to euthanizing anyone with any sort of genetic abnormalities or weaknesses—eugenics, essentially.

As someone who is considered to have several federally recognized disabilities—though not the most "visible" kinds, like being a paraplegic or such— I feel comfortable saying this is more paternalistic, alarmist nonsense. Well-meaning, perhaps, but still patronizing and baseless. It is unfortunate that disability advocates would align their rhetoric so closely with anti-abortionist rhetoric…but when one considers how similar the two matters are (the right to an abortion and the right to a painless voluntary death), it makes sense that's the path of rhetoric they'd choose.

I will not mince words here, because I don't believe disabled people are less able to handle the truth of this situation than anyone else. Disabled people have a right to the happiest life they can possibly attain. They (we) do not deserve to be saddled with the massive doctor/hospital bills, societal stigma, and inadequate care they often are. But your slippery slope arguments are unfounded.

If you want to talk about obstacles stopping people from accessing adequate care, your time would be much better spent taking aim at big pharma and insurance companies; entities who regularly chooses not to pursue potentially useful treatments if they're not deemed profitable, and who charge exorbitant fees (and outright deny coverage) for existing treatments. Another source of misery for disabled people comes from the government's handling of disability payments and the fact that a person can only qualify for them if they have 2000 dollars or less in their bank account, basically a measure to ensure disabled people can never save up for their future.

These are people and entities who regularly and systematically make disabled people's lives substantially worse, and perhaps if you are so worried that enough disabled people want voluntary euthanasia to make it a reality, consider pouring your efforts into making life as bearable as possible through these channels. I understand your trepidations that governments/companies could opt to just pour their support behind assisted suicide in an attempt to evade accountability for the piss poor state of the medical industry and disability payments, but these are not even close to adequate enough reasons to meddle with other's agency.

So let me just say this: if you are quadriplegic, or if you have ALS, or any other disease or condition that may cause people to seek voluntary death— you deserve access to affordable, adequate care. You deserve doctors that will listen to your needs, who won't discount or diminish your pain (an experience most chronically ill people are all too familiar with). And you deserve protection from anyone who should try to coax you into making a decision you're not comfortable with, pertaining to any aspect of your treatment. If you choose to live, then society should do everything in its power to make sure your life is as rich and enjoyable as anyone else's.

But none of this means you have the right to force your beliefs and decisions onto another patient with the same diagnosis, or other chronically ill/disabled people in general. You having a certain disability does not crown you king of all disabled people, and you don't get to tell a rational adult that you understand their lived experience and best course of action better than they do. Even though two people may both be considered disabled, even though two people may share the same specific diagnosis—does not mean these two people's journeys, experiences, or desires are even remotely alike. Reaffirming this is central to recognizing the unique humanity of each and every person with a disability.

The push to cast euthanasia as some sort of twisted plot to rid the world of paternalism and fear-mongering at its finest. No amount of activist buzzwords or appeals to people's existing biases will ever grant you the right to decide that another person should be forced to suffer against their will. Other disabled people are not your political pawns, and the idea that they must suffer indefinitely for the "greater good" of your social justice movement or your ideology is downright cruel and heartless.

Contrary to what your slippery slope fallacies may posit, compassionate and well-regulated access to peaceful means of exiting the world bears no resemblance to the forced sterilization of black women in the 20th century. It does not appeal to any fascistic beliefs about the "master race." People seem to come to these conclusions out of fear that doctors will start suggesting their patients just die instead of giving them choices that would improve their quality of life, or that pharmaceutical/insurance companies will team up to kill off as many disabled patients as they can.

I cannot outright deny that there is zero possibility of this happening. Even in the best regulated system, sometimes less than savory people slide through the cracks and do horrible things within the framework set out by those with good intentions. I am certain that there have been at least a few—a very, very tiny percent— of Planned Parenthood doctors who coaxed patients into abortions that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten. Does this mean we deny women the agency to control their own bodies out of fear that every abortion doctor either does currently or will in the future harbor some evil, eugenics-based ideology that they inflict on their patients and eventually on society as a whole?

Of course not. It means we do everything in our power to make sure there are checks and balances in the system and that no one is being manipulated, not that we abandon the whole thing and forfeit our own fundamental rights to decide what we do with our own bodies. acrificing yet more to the shrine of human suffering we're all expected to pay constant tribute.

As David Foster Wallace said, for a severely depressed person, suicide can be likened to jumping out of a burning building. It's not that the prospect of the jump is suddenly appealing, or any less terrifying than it would be for you or me taking a casual look out the window, it's that it becomes the slightly less terrible of two options when faced with the flames closing in around you.

If this is to be believed—and I think it should, as I am only one of many, many people who this quote deeply resonated with—then I once saw someone astutely point out that suicide prevention does not seek to put out the flames, it seeks to put bars on the windows so there is no hope of escape.

III.

When most of us think about the specifics of someone committing suicide, what do we think of? Usually hanging, blowing one's brains out, jumping in front of a train or out a window. Or maybe slitting one's wrists or overdosing on aspirin (both incredibly unreliable and painful, as it so happens). Even the quickest and most painless death on that list—a shotgun to the brainstem—is still dripping with violence and trauma. If the suicide of a loved one isn't tragic and brutal enough in the abstract, just add the walking in on their brains blown all over the wall to really get a sobering dose of reality.

And that's where the "bars on the window" metaphor takes form: suicide prevention efforts are rarely about wellness, happiness, safety or any such noble intent: they are about control and obedience. I need only one example to illustrate this point.

The current gold standard in achieving a peaceful death is a class of drugs called barbiturates. Used frequently in the mid 20th century for sleep, they were slowly phased out of the market once 'safer' drugs such as benzos and z-drugs became available and now are essentially banned everywhere except for the purposes of veterinary euthanasia in Mexico and a handful of other countries. Pentobarbital ("Nembutal") is often the drug of choice for euthanasia organizations as it brings about swift unconsciousness and death within about 15 min-2 hours. It's as close to "dying in your sleep" as one can get, essentially.

And just with any other drug, outlawing it does not stop the demand; such efforts merely forcing people to resort to risky and illegal means of getting it. Except this isn't a high people are chasing— it's the fundamental human right to self-deliverance, many people's one and only hope of meeting their end on their own terms and without unnecessary violence or drawn out suffering.

Many of the people seeking Nembutal were/are members of Australian right-to-die advocate Philip Nitschke's organization Exit International. Exit International is not open to anyone— it requires their members either be over 50 years old or suffering from a "serious illness." Depression and other mental illnesses do not meet this criteria. The bulk of Exit members are elderly people who are either currently dealing with an incredibly painful and/or terminal illness or who want the option of a peaceful death should they ever find themselves in that situation. These are not people who should be in anyone's "grey area" of who deserves access to a humane death— and yet.

And yet, police have made a habit over the years of continually harassing Nitschke and members of his organization— setting up fake DUI checkpoints outside Exit International meetings to gather information on members, intercepting their Nembutal and performing raids disguised as "wellness checks", forcing Nitschke to give up his medical license and bringing up lawsuits against him, etc.

I want to reiterate one more time in case you forgot— *these are elderly, often terminally ill people we're talking about. These are not depressed teenagers or 20 somethings. These are 80 year olds with terminal cancer, or 50 year olds with early onset Alzheimers, or 60 year olds who are completely content with their lives but would feel even better if they knew should the worst happen, they do not have to fear years of suffering and unendurable pain.*

So now, in July of 2019 when I am writing this, we find ourselves in a situation where Interpol and the US Department of Homeland motherfucking Security are involved in cooperating with local law enforcement to raid the homes of people they suspect of buying Nembutal. Before this increased police activity, there was exactly one reputable Nembutal supplier for the entire world (though there are scams abound if you google "buy nembutal")— a retired Mexican veterinarian whose contact information could be found in Philip Nitschke's Peaceful Pill Handbook.

Anyone with any hint of rationality and empathy may be scratching their heads as they read this and asking— why would police devote precious resources to harassing largely sick and elderly people who simply want peace of mind and alleviation of unspeakable suffering?

Because legalistic suicide prevention efforts are not about compassion, or harm reduction, or rationality. They are about nothing more than control, puritanical religious doctrine, and hysterical dogma. Law enforcement's willingness to go after terminally ill 80 year olds for the crime of not wanting to spend their final years wasting away in a decaying mind and body for years on end is proof enough of this. But this paternalistic, oppressive garbage pile of an ideology doesn't just affect elderly people, or the terminally ill. The fact remains that the right to a peaceful and painless death extends to far more people than Exit International may accept, and we have a lot more blood on our hands than most realize.

Let's quickly dispel the myth that the police or our culture in general cares deeply about anyone's welfare. If this were true, before knocking on anyone's door to inquire about their suspected Barbiturate purchase, they'd be tending to the millions of homeless people on the streets, many of whom are literally begging for help from strangers, many of whom die from untreated disease or drug overdose or freezing temperatures or an assortment of other brutalities every day. Even setting that aside for a moment, a country that sends people off to die in wars— a country that has drafts, for fuck's sake— is not a country overly occupied with anyone's day-to-day safety beyond their utility to its leaders. We are, for the most part, expendable.

A person sleeping on the street though, maybe days or months away from accidentally ODing or freezing to death or being stabbed or shot— they're following the script, everything's in order there as far as law enforcement is concerned. No one rocking the boat. So too, perhaps to a lesser extent, are the people who hang themselves in their closets, or jump off bridges or in front of trains, or who blow their brains out. Those are open-and-shut cases for cops and for society in general. It's the same story every time: so tragic, so sad, if they'd only called X suicide hotline or spent X weeks involuntarily committed to a p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶ psych ward followed by X months of therapy and X dose of an SSRI, they might still be here. Blame remains a vague specter, impossible to really assign, and the tragedy of it all inevitably revolves around the fact that their lives are over— paying no mind to how much suffering they had to endure in the process leading up to and during death. Case closed, seen it many times before, generate some ribbons to post up on facebook.

But the person ordering Nembutal? Well, now you've got a problem. Now you've got someone with an active interest in limiting their own suffering; now you've got someone importing something illegal and someone doing something even more illegal by selling to them. Now you might have loved ones who want answers—someone held accountable. This won't do. This flies in the face of the natural order of things.

Actually, according to available data, access to euthanasia programs *increases* life expectancy and quality of life. Something about not spending every day worrying about inescapable agony in your near future that makes people want to live, huh?

As for my reasons? Maybe I don't need to put those out publicly to be picked apart. My body is my body is my body and that's the bottom line. I have lived in it long enough to know that I do not want continue. I am not in the midst of a psychotic episode, nor am I under any illusions about the permanence of death.

Just because one has a right to live doesn't mean they have an obligation to. And you certainly have neither the right nor the obligation to force them to.

****and it's often much, much worse because we force it to be as gruesome and drawn out as possible, allowing people to thirst and starve to death over the course of days by turning off their feeding tube instead of giving them a quick, painless injection that would knock them out in seconds.

Zoe Jacobs 2019 ©