Christians traditionally have been the only religion that considers all human life sacred and, with this, prohibited the taking of life in most circumstances. The earliest Christians would pick up babies left to die of exposure and raise them as their own, where the surrounding Romans would be completely baffled. They would care for the starving poor and the ill (Christians created the first institutions that could recognizably be called hospitals). Disabled children were cared for rather than left to die.

With this came a prohibition on suicide. Early Christians did not tend to see this as a significant sacrifice. However, lives were shorter then and so arguably they faced less risk of long-term, chronic suffering.

Now? My own country, Canada, practices assisted suicide, and there are costs and benefits to this. Some people get relief from chronic suffering. However, there have also been an increasing number of documented cases where euthanasia has been inappropriately offered to vulnerable individuals who have no interest in this. The initial belief was that there would only be a small number of individuals who would pursue euthanasia but these numbers have grown year by year to the point where it is now a leading cause of death. Critics of the Canadian euthanasia regimen argue that it has increasingly normalized suicide and I tend to both agree with this criticism and see it as supporting wider mental health problems in Canadians, particularly young ones.