Once in every while an ethical dilemma will swim across the horizon, a dilemma whose wake will induce in me a bout of moral seasickness. My compass spins, my bearings wheel and lurch. One such is the reappearance of “facilitated self-harm”. I am not over-fond of the word “facilitate”. It drips with the oil of evasion. It sits too easily on the smoothest tongues. What is meant here is helping people to hurt themselves. It refers to the practice of providing people who self-harm the sterile means to accomplish it. more…