Margaret “Peggy” Battin - The Completed Life Initiative

Advisory Board Member

Margaret “Peggy” Battin, PhD

Margaret Pabst Battin (nicknamed Peggy) is a distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Ethics, at the University of Utah. Because of her extensive research in medical ethics, she has been named as one of the “Mothers of Bioethics” by the Women’s Bioethics Project.

She has been engaged in research on active euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands. She has published books on the ethical issues surrounding suicide, euthanasia, as well as the ethics of religious refusal of medical treatment.

In 1997 she received the University of Utah’s Distinguished Research award, and in 2000, she received the Rosenblatt Prize, the University of Utah’s most prestigious award. She was named Distinguished Honors Professor in 2002-03.

She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and holds an M.F.A. in fiction-writing and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Irvine. The author of prize-winning short stories and recipient of the University of Utah’s Distinguished Research Award, she has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited some twenty books.

FAVORITE QUOTE

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

– Mark Twain

“My first direct experiences with end of life issues came with the cancer death of my mother when I was 21, back in the era when no one ever spoke of death or told a patient she was dying—everyone knew, but everyone lied. My second came with the double bicycle accident of my husband that rendered him quadriplegic and ventilator dependent, and his widely reported choices both about how grateful he was to have been rescued and his decision, five years later, to have the ventilator discontinued and so die. Thinking clearly about death and dying is so important, and why I’m involved in CLI.”

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