Your Fundamental, Constitutional Right To Take Your Own Life

This is a collection of essays explaining why, for various reasons, suicide--the taking of one's own life--is and must be among the most basic and fundamental of all human rights. Various essays demonstrate how suicide comes within the constitutional protection of one or another amendment within the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution, including the First Amendment (freedom of speech and religious expression), the Eighth Amendment (freedom from cruel and unusual punishments), the Thirteenth Amendment (freedom from slavery and involuntary servitude), as well as the general right to privacy that implicitly emanates from the Constitution in general and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments in particular. Although suicide is an act that is awesome in its finality and irreversibility, and thus an act that should only be undertaken, if at all, with a full and mature consideration of all available options and alternatives, it is, ultimately, up to the individual owner of a life to decide what to do with that life, including whether to end it. Beyond certain reasonable limits to safeguard against rash or involuntary actions, it is not the proper role of government or any other human institution to forbid suicide outright or to obstruct the seeking of assistance with suicide where such assistance is earnestly and rationally desired.