No, this is not about Election 2004.
Robert I.H. Hammerman was a well thought of former Baltimore judge that recently committed suicide after long planning the event, even to the extent of writing a ten page suicide note that he copied/mailed (the day before) to 2,200 people. This bizarre public airing of an event that for good or ill cannot be said to be totally rare (as noted, historian/author Iris Chang recently killed herself; the elderly -- Hammerman was 76 so fit the term at least as to age -- have much higher rates than even depressed thirty year olds) put a particularly tragic flavor to the event, especially given the judge's popularity and sense of privacy.
The reasons appear to be related to fears that his body and mind was about to decline, a state of affairs that he could not bear to contemplate living. "The thought of Alzheimer's is dreadful to me. I would need institutionalization," he wrote. "There are happily certain people who care about me -- but none able to care for me."
And though his death would greatly affect certain people, he lists in particular his sister, some might say that his act is less "selfish" than those whose suicide would leave a family without a breadwinner. Ultimately, though his response to such judgments feels sound: "Some may say of me that it is an act of a coward," he wrote. "So be it. It is so easy for one outside the ring to tell the fighter how to fight his fight."*
The bloggist Mark Kleiman discussed suicide a few months back and his response to a reader seems to me to get at the core of the issue:
A reader points out that the distinction between considered and impulsive acts is at least partly misleading, since someone in the grip of depression or anxiety disorder may plan a suicide carefully over a long period. A suicide committed not on impulse, but with impaired decision-making capacity, can be just as tragic and just as preventable as an impulsive act. So the right distinction is between "well-considered" acts, planned over time with relatively unimpaired mental faculties, and "poorly-considered" acts done either rashly or under the burden of mental illness.
Or, as James Fleming discussed in an essay in Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies, ultimately the matter boils down to self-autonomy. Will we be "mere creatures of the state" or be led by our own moral choices? Questions of life and death such as these "are significant preconditions for persons' development and exercise of deliberative autonomy in making fundamental decisions affecting their destiny, identity, or way of life." The state might control the contours of such decision making in various ways, but ultimately, liberty includes making certain life and death decisions. And, such liberty should not be breached to promote some particular (out of many options) state sponsored view of life.
This is not to say that we must be aware of those who are not competent -- if the incompetent cannot get a marriage license, surely they in various cases cannot get state sanction to kill themselves. But, the contours and safeguards of basic liberties does not do away with the inner core that remains. Likewise, basic liberties does not do away with morality and values that can counsel us not to do various things at all or under sundry situations.
I'd argue though that tragic or not, Judge Hammerman acted in a quite moral way, one in which many of us might understand in various respects. And, in some sense, it is not tragic at all -- he lived and died as he desired, the limitations of our reality notwithstanding. This ultimately is my own moral belief, though one I think grows out of values accepted in some large part by society as a whole, but my ability so develop it (and act it out in various degrees) lies at the core of my freedom.
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* The article which inspired this discussed quoted a few sentences of the letter, which I also determined was extracted to a somewhat longer degree in a Baltimore paper. I have not read the extracts nor the letter as a whole, so surely do not fully know the motivations of this individual. The event, however, was reported upon largely for its large implications and lessons, and this is my intent here.