Douthat goes another round:
[Assisted suicide] turns medical professionals into soul-readers, asking them to examine a tormented person and decide whether the death wish they’re feeling is temporary or permanent, whether it emanates from their demons or from their authentic (under the inevitably-uncertain definition of “authentic”) selves.
This is why I think a legal and cultural presumption against suicide is actually more modest, in a sense, than the alternative of allowing physicians to assist in voluntary euthanasia. Absent a totalitarian police state (and not really even then), a presumption against suicide doesn’t usually prevent people who really, really want to kill themselves from finding a way to do it. But neither does it empower any authority, whether public or private, to claim that they know the last word about any human heart.
The Dish 