A few days ago, various media around the world echoed a document from the World Health Organization (WHO) which indicated with well-founded concern that 800,000 people a year voluntarily decide to take their own lives. This means that every 40 seconds a person commits suicide in the world. To this must be added the issue number of people who attempt suicide and fail in their attempt. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people between 15 and 29 years of age. 

The numbers are certainly worrying, but as Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, points out, one suicide is already too many. The nearly 100 pages of this tight report end by pointing out five elements core topic: (1) the global fees of suicides and suicide attempts are too high; (2) suicides are preventable. In this regard, governments must lead multisectoral suicide prevention strategies; (3) these preventive strategies must restrict access to the most common means of committing suicide (intake of certain drugs, firearms and pesticides); (4) health systems must incorporate suicide prevention as a central component; and (5) communities play a crucial role in suicide prevention to the extent that they can offer social support to vulnerable individuals.

            The reading of report, which contains not only abundant sociological information but also concrete preventive proposals, leaves unanswered, in my opinion, the really important question: why should we do everything possible to prevent people, whether many or few, from committing suicide? Certainly, knowing the factors that lead a person to make such a terrible decision as taking his or her own life is very useful for designing the most appropriate preventive strategies. On the other hand, considering such a decision leaves us, in a way, in a sort of "dumbness" in which it becomes clear that it is impossible to know exactly what goes through the mind and heart of the person who deliberately makes such a decision. As Dietrich von Hildebrand, among other authors, has emphasized, death has a metaphysical aspect that alludes to the fragility of human existence.

It is often argued that people have the right to make their own decisions autonomously. No one has the right to protect the free exercise of freedom by individuals. But, if this is so, why are governments so determined - in my opinion, more than justified - to discourage suicide? Would this not be an illegitimate intrusion into people's most intimate freedom? There are many questions that are connected with those I have just asked. Ultimately written request, what is at stake here - and not only in the question of suicide - is whether the right to decide autonomously and the right to life are on the same level or, formulated in another way, whether the goods they protect, namely life and autonomy, are equal.  

It does not seem so. The right to life is the basic fundamental right, since without it no other right would exist. For this reason, the right to life usually overrides any other right to which it is opposed, such as, in this case, the right to autonomy in making decisions. This explains why the State has the obligation to protect life as a basic human good by discouraging those behaviors -including its own- that threaten it. Therefore, the most fundamental right of all, the right to life, is inalienable. There are some things that simply cannot be done to a person, even if he or she consents or even if no one denounces them. In this order of things, the State cannot guarantee that we are all born healthy, but it can and must guarantee that no one violates our physical integrity. And that includes ourselves.

Suicidal behaviors are often the consequence of certain mental pathologies. I am not a doctor and I cannot make a judgment about it, but it seems that the decision to take one's own life is often taken in a context of deep loneliness. It is paradoxical that in a society as "connected" as ours there are so many people who feel lonely. It seems, at times, that loneliness has ceased to be sonorous... I don't want to get moralistic, but those of us who believe that life is worth living and that it is dominated by the good and the bad should think about how we "infect" our commitment to life. All life is worth living.