Is Suicide Civilized?
So far as I know, the only species OTHER than man that committs suicide are lemmings, small scandinavian rodent (and only when they begin to severely impact their environment, ie: too little food...).
As to addressing thequestion from our posers point of view, it is NOTHING.
IF you have been diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease--or any other terminal disease), have slowly degenerated over a decade until you require oxygen on a constant basis, and then take an airplane ride and "catch a cold" because the airlines are TOO cheap to put in a machine that would cost 90 cents a passenger/yr, which confines you to bed for the REST of what remains of your life, after having lead a very phyiscally active life, then, yes, I consider, rational, considered, responsible suicide, HIGHLY civilized.
For the Attorney General to dictate states rights (by threatening to remove perscriptive rights of phyisicians) based on his particular brand of hypocritical morality, as John Ashcorft did in Oregon last fall, I find it disgusting as well as a willful violation of the separation of church and state (his particular brand of morality being based on hypocritical protestantism, in which he illegally compells his staff to participate in daily prayer meetings).
Now for a depressed psychotic teenager (most are do to hormone imbalances, actually) to do it mostly due to parental neglect, and boredom, this I find to be a WASTE, but I find the similarity between lemmings and most humans growing greater as I grow older.