Question

You're walking over a bridge and you find a pile of clothes, a pair of glasses and a note which says "can't take it any more!" You look over the side of the bridge and see someone in the water. What would you do? Would your (a) dive in and rescue them; (b) leave them be or (c) something else? I'm not sure what I would do because it presents something of an ethical and moral dilemma. Should a person be free to commit suicide? If so, should that be dependent on them being sound of mind - forgetting for a moment that some would say that even contemplating taking your own life all but guarantees that you're not. This scenario happened in a small Australian town earlier this week when a young man dove 10 metres from a bridge into a river to rescue an elderly woman, even though she attempted to fighting them off, even trying to force them both underwater at one stage. She is recovering. So how was he to know if the woman was serious about taking her life - or if her actions were a "cry for help"? Or shouldn't it have mattered? I'm not sure about it and definitely not sure about what the "right" course of action would have been - especially having read reports of people who have survived jumping from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Seems that most of them, on the way down, wished they hadn't jumped. There may not be any cut and dried answers for this one. Although perhaps the real question, as reported by The Daily Examiner, was asked by Mrs Shipley, one of the people who helped the two from the water: "What is going on in this woman's life to make her jump off the bridge, doesn't anybody care about her?"