That's not a good analogy, because if I steal money off you today, you'll be angry with me tomorrow, and indefinitely into the future. You are against me stealing from you 100% of the time.
Consider instead the case where you're a recovering gambling addict who's asked me to make sure you don't gamble again. One night I find you in the pokies room, so I take your wallet and tell you I'll give it back tomorrow morning. I agree that this is theft and possibly morally wrong; however, I don't agree that it breaches your right to self-determination, since most of the time you seem pretty determined not to gamble.
So if someone consistently tells you that they want to die, if they consistently get angry at you and authorities for intervening, you're saying that you'll support their right to self-determination?
Yes. If someone demonstrates a consistent determination to die, when asked at random times, and over a long enough time period to rule out episodic mental health issues, and they've made appropriate arrangements for their family, I don't think they should be stopped from killing themselves.
I disagree with the claim that many suicides are like that, I don't think the suicide from the article was like that, and the word "consistently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Appreciate your honesty and consistency. Likewise, I think the phrase "mental health issue" does a lot of heavy lifting for you. I don't think many mental health issues disqualify you from making a self-respecting decision over your own body. Few truly want to impose such extended blanket restrictions on other life or death decisions like critical treatment-refusal, military action, many types of self-destructive behavior or (controversially) abortion. Something about suicide brings out people's inner autocrat.
Yeah, episodic is the differentiator for me in terms of what should be prevented. With someone suffering episodes of severe depression, there's a clash between what the individual wants while not suicidal vs while suicidal.
Intuitively I feel that it's like two different people are making decisions about the one body, and the finality of suicide means the suicidal part of someone is wiping out the future for both, and should thus be prevented.
Again, though, the majority of suicide victims aren't suicidal for large periods of their lives. I feel that in the cases where someone is only briefly suicidal during the worst troughs of mood, the suicidal 1% of a life would wipe out the non-suicidal 99%, which is a monumental loss to inflict.
Consider instead the case where you're a recovering gambling addict who's asked me to make sure you don't gamble again. One night I find you in the pokies room, so I take your wallet and tell you I'll give it back tomorrow morning. I agree that this is theft and possibly morally wrong; however, I don't agree that it breaches your right to self-determination, since most of the time you seem pretty determined not to gamble.