Right to Jump, or a Right to Encourage it?

It has been a busy week at work. As your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning you do not even remember coming home. In fact, you do not even remember sleeping any other time in the past few days. Today is the big deadline and you thought it wise to grant yourself a few hours of sleep before you give the biggest presentation of your career. Pressed for time, you decide to eat on the way so you pour a cup of coffee into a travel mug and grab an un-toasted Pop-Tart before heading to your car.

To your dismay, traffic seems to be worse than usual this morning. Worried you are going to be late, you phone your secretary in a panic and ask her to stall. Just when you are about to hang up, you become suddenly aware of the problem. Traffic has now stopped and you can see a distraught woman standing on a bridge threatening to kill herself. Knowing you will never make it to work on time, you momentarily lose your temper and throw your phone into the same river in which the woman is preparing to jump.

“Hey lady, do like the phone and get wet!” you hear from a commuter behind you. Before you can even turn around and look at the commuter in disgust, a chant starts amongst the other motorists. “Jump, [expletive], jump! Jump, [expletive], jump!” She finally does.

Surely this is only a story. One might assume that such indecent and purely evil behavior could never happen in reality. But on August 28th, 2001, in Seattle, Washington, commuters late for work encouraged a suicidal woman to jump from a bridge by chanting “Jump, [expletive], jump!” Was this “morally right” for the crowd to do? Is there actually even such a thing as “morally right” or “morally wrong”? Or, does “morality” depend on the situation, culture, or circumstances? Was the woman, who ended up surviving the jump, right for wanting to take her own life because of problems she was having in a relationship or is there a universally higher standard that prevents her from doing so?