That's the stuff. Rubbish Christianity at every opportunity, but claim that it's practitioners have the power to prevent suicide. It took decade of expense and time for a Court to make a common sense decision. The only people responsible for suicide are people who kill themselves.

OH dear with suicide rates rocketing and church attendance plummeting in the west you would think a lawyer would grow a brain. Imagine every doctor or psych was sued for prescribing wrong drugs to mental health patients. No wonder the swamp needs draining.

I am not in the slightest bit religious, in fact I think that organised Religion is evil .

However , Dear Writer , you did give yourself away with the statement ' religion could include belief in a supernatural thing or principle, not just in a guy in the sky.'

A Guy in the Sky... Aka The Flying Spaghetti Monster , you mean ?

Yeah we know Aspley believing that something came from nothing and that laws don't demand a Lawmaker, or creation demand a Creator in the god deniers eyes is 'logical'. No wonder suicide rates keep rising as we are dumb enough to teach kids their are no absolutes and violating ones moral conscience has no consequences. Yep the deniers get more irrational everyday requiring pseudo science to back their hopelessly flawed narrative.

The author (as a lawyer), should concentrate his efforts for a more accepted godless world, by purging the Catholic Church of its large element of homosexual pedophiles.

After all, it's that Godless group, responsible for the higher than usual suicide rate among their victims, and not the preaching by the vast majority of good and honourable Catholic clergy.

There are several great points in your article Spaul. But I think this one is the best.

In Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, J.M. Hecht argues that anti-suicide ideas should be promoted in society, "lest a person be confronted by suicidal thoughts alone and unarmed, when most vulnerable".

It's not always an issue any of us are prepared to stand up against and in those situtions we need to have the battle against suicide in our culture already faught so that suicide doesn't become the running though in our mind. To give up, or otherwise to justify killing ourselves.

Your next point makes this issue even more clear.

"Hecht points out that by staying alive a person avoids causing suffering to their family, friends and community, and avoids increasing the risk that others will suicide."

In my opinion this isn't about the church or about the suing case as much as the article is about suicide and reducing it. On that level, I agree wholeheartedly.