[Avodah] assisted suicide

[Zev Sero]

JRich at Sibson.com wrote:


>> I think the problem with suicide is that your life belongs to Hashem.
>> Only he has the right to give and take it away. So if he listens to
>> your tefillos, you were within your rights, as was He.

> perhaps, or perhaps one could say that he's within his rights not to
> take medicine and if hashem let's him die because of it, then he was
> within his rights and no harm no foul.

Well, yes.  Does anyone say otherwise?

That it's permitted to pray for the end to come is clear in the gemara.
Not just for oneself but for someone else.

Is there anyone who paskens that one must take medicine to extend
beyond its natural term a life one doesn't want to live?  Surely the
only question we're discussing here is that of active measures to
*shorten* life by human hands.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas