Since the question was closed and I probably did not express myself clearly enough, let me rephrase what is below:
- laws come from some cultural legacy
- in Europe we generally believe that killing someone is not good
- a law on abortion is in place because society thinks that there is some killing (or alledged killing) and it has to be legally framed. Whatever is this law is good or bad is outside the realm of this question. Do not discuss whether this is a murder or not - it is irrelevant here
- by default assisted suicide was murder in the past, and some countries decided to make a law that allows assisted suicide in some conditions Whether this law is good or not is irrelevant here
My question is: we have two laws where one (abortion) is for A
making the decision to kill B
(with the context above, please do not debate whether this is correct, the law was put undeniably in place for that reason), and the other (suicide) is when A
decides to kill oneself, asking for help B
.
→ Why does the law on A
killing B
is more liberal than A
killing oneself with B
help ←
If this is not clear enough and there are discussions about whether abortion or suicide is morally good or bad (except if this directly answers the question) I will delete the question because we cannot have nice things.
When looking at the legal landscape in Europe, US (until recently at least), Canada - so countries culturally related to Judeo-Christianity, there are usually laws for abortion (more or less liberal) but suicide is not. Or rather there is no provision for assisted suicide.
If there is any, it came after the abortion laws.
I can imagine that abortion is complicated for some people as they may hold the idea that there is killing of another person by the perpetrator (the mother) and therefore there is a will to protect that unborn person.
Suicide on the other hand is something you do to yourself, so even if both are "evil", one is obviously "eviler".
I am curious why the laws are more open to allowing the alleged killing of someone else, but fiercely forbid to do it to oneself.
I am specifically not interested in whether abortion or suicide are good or not. What I am interested in is why to the possibility of killing someone else is discussed and legally bordered, and suicide is a clear "no" (or was coded later than abortion)