About Peggy
Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Battin is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and bioethicist at the University of Utah, where she has focused her career on end-of-life care, suicide, and individual rights. For decades, she has been a leading voice defending the right of terminally ill people to have autonomy, or control, over their own death, a concept she calls seeking the “least worst death.” Her extensive work includes authoring or editing over twenty books, such as The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life (1994) and The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources (2015). Her academic focus has always been to challenge and clarify ethical questions, including those concerning euthanasia and the role of religion in medical choices. Peggy’s professional and personal worlds were deeply connected in 2008 when her husband, Brooke, became quadriplegic after a bicycle accident. After years of struggle, he decided to have his life support disconnected. Peggy, despite her lifelong advocacy for patient choice, found it unexpectedly hard to accept his decision. This personal experience forced her to re-examine her long-held beliefs about a person’s absolute right to self-determination in the face of death, bringing a powerful, emotional layer to her work on end-of-life decision-making.
