The Right to Life is also the Right to Death

Suicide - people don't talk favourably of that sort of thing. But could it be said that the right to end you own life is a key natural right all people possess? David Hume once wrote a great essay justifying the right to suicide to many of its religious critics. I would approach this from a different perspective though - the perspective of property rights and self-ownership. The definition of property (as I have written before on this blog as well as countless articles and school papers) which I accept is: "that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe". This is, of course, the definition written by the great codifier of Natural Law, Lord William Blackstone. The only thing I would change in that definition is the removal of the adjective 'external' which I consider superfluous because internal things (such as our bodily organs) are clearly also our property (unless Lord Blackstone used the word 'external' as referring to all things external to the conscious mind, in which case I would agree - the physical body is external to the mind after all).
So what does property have to do with suicide? Well, since property right is despotic, it includes the right of destruction. If we own something, we may destroy it. It might not be prudent or advisable to do so, but we have the right to destroy out property. In fact, I always use this easy exercise to see if something is actually property. Just ask yourself (about the thing you are trying to determine whether it is your property) if you are allowed to destroy it. If you are, it is your property. If not (i.e. someone else has the right to prevent you from destroying it) then it is not. To be a property owner means being a despot! This is always a criticism I have levelled at so-called 'left-libertarians' or 'socialist anarchists'. They reject the despotic aspects of property and yet claim it exists. In a way, they are involved in a simple contradiction. Property is by definition a despotic right; it is a tautology to speak of it this way.
And this, in turn, means that if we own our body, we have the right to destroy it any time we damn well please. In fact preventing people from committing suicide is an act of usurpation (as defined in yesterday's post, it is the claiming of their rights for your own). If you prevent someone from killing themselves what you are really saying is "I have a claim on your right to life that is stronger than you own right to life". This is a clear breach of the self-ownership principle. The 'rescuer' is claiming ownership of the person attempting suicide. This is clearly an acknowledgement of slavery.
I write this post today because I had a conversation about this with a friend of mine today and she seemed to be very sceptical about it. We were watching a program on Polish TV which was about people who 'saved' others from suicide. The suicide 'victims' are then treated as mentally ill people. The word victim is very much out of place there by the way - am I a victim of starvation if I don't eat of my own choice, for example? I cannot be a victim of my own actions because I cannot commit a crime against myself, it is a logical impossibility.