[cldellow]

More nuance, please!

I think most women have thought about abortion to some degree and formed an opinion on whether it's the right choice for them, or under what conditions they would entertain the idea of an abortion versus keeping the child in an unexpected pregnancy. In these cases, you're right: discouraging women who have thought about the process would be seen as in bad taste.

But what if the woman was being pressured to abort (or to keep) the child by outside pressure? Then intervention would be seen as supporting the woman, not as interfering, and it'd be in good taste.

IMO, suicide is very similar. A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. I don't think it's too much of a leap from that to the idea that a large proportion of suicides themselves are being done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the "outside pressure" of a brain that is suffering a mental illness.

[lmz]

I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. How long do people have to suffer in order for you to say "this person's done enough thinking about it, he can go"?

[anigbrowl]

Speaking from experience, I disagree. I'm in favor of a generalized right to commit suicide as a fundamental ground of self-determination, but it can often be a compulsive rather a considered action; furthermore it can be based on a fundamentally irrational discounting of the future ('I'll never be happy again, my life can only get worse') which may be merely temporary or the result of developmental delays/deficits in handling emotional swings.

[Jtsummers]

> I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking.

[citation needed]

Most seems unlikely to me, at least for first attempts.

[thaumasiotes]

> A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment.

A different conclusion you could draw from this are that the failed attempts failed because they weren't really trying to kill themselves, a sort of regretting-in-advance, if you will. I feel pretty safe in saying that successful suicide attempts don't go on to regret it, and it's not at all obvious that the failures and the successes are examples of the same phenomenon.