Topics Ethics

Question If everyone has the right to their own body, is there anything even wrong with self-injury? If someone who smokes is effectively also 'harming' himself, what makes a person cutting herself doing something wrong?

Accepted:
November 24, 2010

Comments

I'd be appalled if anyone was to suggest that there was something morally wrong about self-harm. Not least because the very worst thing that one could do to a cutter would be to make her feel even more guilty and ashamed than she probably already -- though quite undeservedly -- does feel.

But is it in her own best interests to be cutting herself? In the moment, perhaps it can bring some fleeting relief from overwhelming psychological pain -- just as, in the moment, smoking can bring some fleeting relief from its own withdrawal symptoms. But, in the long run, smoking can lead to serious health problems; and habitual cutting can increase a sense of isolation and self-hatred, and generally tend to perpetuate the very psychological problems that led to it in the first place. Wouldn't it be nicer to be free of that emotional distress altogether, so that there'd no longer be any need to resort to such violent means to release it? Or at the very least, until that pain goes fully away, to develop some more pleasant and quite possibly more effective ways of coping with it? With medical help, or at least help from loving and non-judgmental friends and family, such goals really aren't as unattainable as they can seem from the perspective of someone who is still in the midst of the kind of turmoil and despair that tends to accompany self-injurious behaviour.

Question If everyone has the right to their own body, is there anything even wrong with self-injury? If someone who smokes is effectively also 'harming' himself, what makes a person cutting herself doing something wrong? Accepted:November 24, 2010

Question If everyone has the right to their own body, is there anything even wrong with self-injury? If someone who smokes is effectively also 'harming' himself, what makes a person cutting herself doing something wrong?

Accepted:
November 24, 2010