Involuntary hospitalization is a process by which people, without so much as being accused of a crime, are locked up in hospitals. Kidnapping people off the street is a process by which people, again without being so much as accused of a crime, are locked up in, for example people's basements. These seem perfectly analogous to me.

There are a certainly some differences, but they all seem immaterial to me. The most obvious one is that only one of them is legal, but I don't see how law is sufficient to make locking people up ethical; in Russia it's currently legal to lock people up for being gay. People will also object that the involuntarily hospitalized may be a danger to themselves but, to my mind, the right to suicide is fundamental; If someone wants to commit suicide it seems obvious to me that it's wrong to forcibly try to stop them.…