The Unit of Caring

warpedellipsis asked: What do you think about the guilty verdict in the case of the teenager who encouraged her boyfriend to suicide? It's basically making every person liable for a suicidal confidence. IMO I think it won't be used as it should, against abusers whose victims commit suicide; it'll be used instead as abuse and to force people into institutionalization ""for their own good"". People will only be less safe because of this. People won't reach out at all.

Yeah, I totally agree with you there. I worry a lot about laws and legal interpretations that are initially intended for a very narrow purpose - “when someone tells you they got scared and abandoned a suicide attempt, you don’t tell them to man up and do it” - getting used for things like ‘you didn’t call the police on them’. That would be a disaster - I won’t call the police on someone who tells me they’re contemplating suicide, because I think some people will only reach out at all if they don’t think they’ll get institutionalized and I’d rather they be able to reach out to somebody. If this rule put me at legal risk I guess I couldn’t have those conversations at all in a recordable format.

If a law against talking people mid-suicide-attempt into going through with suicide were written very, very carefully and was narrowly tailored to protect all these other circumstances, I think I would be comfortable with it. But as it stands? It seems like the sort of outrageous case that makes bad law, because rules are stretched or interpreted to see her punished in a way that sets bad precedent.

• 20 June 2017
• #suicide cw#murder cw
• 38