Murder, Suicide, and the Convertibility Thesis

In the last few weeks, my social media accounts have been abuzz with the topic of abortion. One common defense of it has been something like, "Since unwanted children will not be aborted, they will most likely end up in the foster care system, where they will probably be abused and raped. So abortion is a better option." After I asked whether they would apply this logic to a two year old, they said they would. In the eyes of my interlocutors, death was a better option. This isn't an uncommon view. I would think most, if not all, persons who committed suicide thought the exact same thing and this motivated their suicide. So, is death better an abused life? In light of the convertibility thesis, it is not. 

The convertibility thesis states that "being" and "good" are basically the same thing, just considered differently. Where there is being, there is goodness coextensive with it. If being alive is participating in being, and death is not participating in that being, then death is always worse, in principle, than living. 

St. Thomas Aquinas lays out reasons for the convertibility thesis here. In line with Aristotle, good is what all things desire. Since desire has an end, goodness has an end. Now a thing is only desirable insofar as it is perfect. By perfect we mean that it lacks nothing. It has the character of being complete and having reached its end. Because it is complete, it is actual, and has no potencies, or any lack. So every act is perfect and good. But act is identified with being, since being is the actuality of everything. Thus, to be is to be actuality, to be actuality is to be perfection, and to be perfection is to be good. Thus being and goodness are essentially the same thing. 

So being alive is always a good. Our very being is infused with meaning and value and intrinsic goodness. Now what about death? 

Let's look at the situations one thinks may justify suicide or killing a child in utero. These are going to be bad and evil things like rape and abuse. Well, what makes them bad? What makes them bad is that they are privations. Because privations are lack of being, privations are also a lack of good. They deprive a human being of a certain good, mainly physical health in the cases proposed to me, and maybe also long term mental health. But if damaging those goods are wrong, then completely annihilating them is even worse. That is why murder is a graver evil than mere abuse. So if the elimination or privation of those goods is what makes them evil, it doesn't matter if the cause if from someone else or of yourself. The value of being is assumed when people say that X, Y, and Z are evil, so as evil as abuse or rape may be, death is even worse. So abortion and suicide are never justified just because one desires to escape some other evil.

For more on the convertibility thesis, see here.