[Avodah] assisted suicide

[Michael Poppers]

(I'm not sure this response qualifies for Avodah or should be posted to a
forum which can be seen by others, but the Areivim Moderators Committee
rejected it for Areivim.  It's slightly edited from the version originally
sent to Areivim that RGS, cc:ed on it, responded to.)

In Avodah Digest V25#36, RGS asked:
> My wife (who is a lobbyist for Agudah) was in Madison, WI yesterday to
join a long list of people/organizations who came to voice their objection
to a proposed bill to allow physician assisted suicide.
> Some of the people who spoke in favor of the bill tried to show how
Shimshon would have been in favor of assisted suicide.
> Can you all help me out here with some mareh m'komos about Shimshon and
suicide? I know it's discussed (maybe even a mefurishe Gemara) but I don't
recall where.
> What are the basic chilukim between Shimshon's situation and a person
suffering from a teminal illness, that would allow him to do what he did,
and yet forbid assisted suicide?
> My first hunch is that by Shimshon it was only a grama. And it might even
be a safek, whereas what the assisted suicide wants to allow would be a
vadai and quite direct. <
Shof'tim 16:30 does seem to indicate that he knew he would die through his
final act; it can be assumed that he thought he would die in any case and
wanted to carry out one last, mighty slaughter of P'lishtim (which
presumably would save Jewish lives in the future) while the opportunity
existed.  I'm reminded, l'havdil, of a "24" episode in which the director
of CTU, knowing he was dying of radiation sickness, piloted a plane
containing a nuclear bomb into a desolate valley surrounded by mountains so
as to save hundreds if not thousands of LA-area citizens from radiation
sickness and/or death when it exploded.  However an outsider/non-Jew wants
to view Shimshon, there seems to be a rational gulf between a
terminally-sick person ending his life w/out accomplishing any benefit for
others (much less doing so with someone else's assistance rather than on
his own) and a person saving a multitude of lives by causing his own death
when lives would not otherwise be saved.

A guten Shabbes and all the best from
--Michael Poppers via RIM pager
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