Suicide as Protest

Heads of state might see themselves as lords of life and death, and it is right to protest this lie. But no human being is the lord of life and death, including one’s own life, one’s own death. To declare protest-by-suicide permissible, even heroic, is to declare that the prohibition against taking innocent human life does not apply to the taking of one’s own life. The best that can be said of Bushnell’s tragic self-immolation is that it briefly drew attention to a horrific war before adding to its body count.