#peggy battin

[grieftv]

Welcome to Grief TV! 

GTV is a video podcast about the many manifestations of grief—in us, in our communities, in our nation. 

Episode 3 features Peggy Battin, a philosopher, bioethicist, researcher, and writer, who does work around the ethics of dying, including suicide and physician-assisted dying. Her husband Brooke, who became quadriplegic after a bicycle accident, died in 2013 after he requested removal of life support. 

In this episode, we talked about Peggy's history of grief, how the loss of her mother set her down a path to find out what it means to have a "good death," how losing Brooke was an echo of losing her mom, and how life and professional interests collide. 

GTV is a sibling project to Live Through This, Suicide 'n' Stuff, the Suicide Chat listserv, & I Hurt Myself Today: A Self-Injury Resource.

[alltimewritersworld-blog]

Peggy Battin

Peggy Battin

Euthanasia is an omission of an intended action which causes direct death to an individual for the reason of mercy. Assisted suicide is intentionally and directly caused as it involves the process of providing death means or the process of encouraging and providing counseling in encouraging a patient to commit suicide. Peggy’s assertion I favor of assisted patient suicide was based…

[39adamstrand]

"Peggy Battin and her husband, Brooke Hopkins, were the subjects of my cover story last month on decision-making at the end of life. Peggy is a philosopher known for her defense of people’s right to choose the manner and timing of their own death. Brooke, a former English professor, was paralyzed in a bicycle accident in late 2008 and held on to life with a vengeance for almost five years. On Saturday, July 27, six days after the article was published in print, he finally decided he’d had enough."

[nprfreshair]

Last month we interviewed bioethicist and right to die advocate Peggy Battin. Her husband Brooke suffered a tragic bicycle injury that left him with quadriplegia and in need of life support technology. Their story was profiled in the New York Times because of her academic work's enmeshment with her personal life.

After 5 years of intensive care and medical procedures, Brooke decided he was ready. He passed away on July 31st, only a few days after the interview aired.

[M]y basic position [is] that people should be recognized to have the right to not only live their lives in ways of their own choosing, providing of course that they don't harm others ... be the architects of their own lives, but that includes the very ... ends of their lives. You shouldn't have to lose those rights just at the end, especially since the very end makes the greatest amount of difference to some people, and also to some of their loved ones around them.

image via the New York Times

[wrenwas]

Note: Brooke Hopkins passed away this week. He and his wife, Peggy, were the focus of this compelling story in the NYTimes as well as in a series of articles in the Salt Lake Tribune.

As a bioethicist, Peggy Battin fought for the right of people to end their own lives. After her husband’s cycling accident, her field of study turned unbearably personal.

[nprfreshair]

Bioethicist Peggy Battin is an advocate for the right-to-die. Her husband had a tragic accident that left him quadriplegic and reliant on breathing and feeding tubes. She discusses the complexity of wishing for life or death in the wake of a traumatic incident:

[Y]our sense of whether you want to continue or not ... your circumstances are so altered, and altered by this phenomenon that doesn't occur for most people in their ordinary lives; you don't have all of your entire family and your entire range of friends all showering you with love all at once. That's quite heady in a way. It's quite wonderful. ... You might even say it's sublime and it's extraordinary. That made a huge amount of difference at the beginning.

image via The Takeaway