Battin earned a
Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from
Bryn Mawr College in 1963. Subsequently, she obtained a
MFA in 1973 and a
PhD in philosophy in 1976 from the
University of California, Irvine. Her master's thesis was titled
The Astonishing Possibilities of Love, and her doctoral thesis was titled
Plato on Truth and Truthlessness in Poetry. Battin took a position as
visiting assistant professor at the
University of Utah in 1975. She was promoted to
assistant professor in 1977 and to
associate professor in 1988. At Utah, she has been an
adjunct professor of internal medicine in the division of
medical ethics since 1990, and since 2000, she has held a position of
distinguished professor of
philosophy. In 1988 Battin travelled to the
Netherlands to study legal euthanasia. For the research she conducted, she was nominated as a candidate for the Spinoza Chair at the
University of Amsterdam, a position she then held 1993. Outside of non-fiction writing, Battin occasionally published fiction pieces including short stories. Fiction allowed her to explore scenarios outside the boundaries of academic philosophy. Her short story,
Terminal Procedure, published in
The Best American Short Stories 1976, explored ethical issues in research on animals.
Robeck, a short story published in
Ending Life: Ethics and the way we die (2005), depicted family tensions over what would now be called preemptive suicide in old age. The story was adapted into a stage play called
WINTER by playwright Julie Jensen. The play premiered on October 12, 2016, at the Salt Lake Acting Company in
Utah. It was also performed in
Chicago, Illinois, and
Berkeley, California, in 2017.
Assisted suicide In 2007, Battin addressed the
slippery slope argument used by opponents of assisted suicide. She was the primary author on the study which investigated the demographics of those who used assisted suicide in Oregon and euthanasia in the Netherlands. The study found that the people who used assisted suicide in the US had more "comparative social, economic, educational, professional and other privileges" than those who were considered to be in vulnerable groups. After a bicycle accident in November 2008, Battin's husband Brooke Hopkins became
quadriplegic. While caring for him, she became aware of an "opposite, more subtle, kind of coercion — not the influence of a greedy relative or a cost-conscious state that wants [the patient] to die, but pressure from a much-loved spouse or partner who wants [the patient] to live." In 2011 and 2012, Battin testified in legal cases for two women seeking the right to assisted dying, Canadian woman
Gloria Taylor, who suffered from
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Irishwoman Marie Fleming, who suffered from
multiple sclerosis. Under cross-examination in Taylor's case, the Canadian government's attorney remarked to Battin that her husband's accident had "presented some pretty profoundly serious challenges to her thinking on the subject.” Battin replied that it had, “but only by provoking the ‘concerted re-re-rethinking’ that any self-respecting philosopher engages in,” and continued with a statement on her continuing commitment to two moral constructs in end-of-life decision-making: autonomy and mercy. "Only where both are operating — that is, where the patient wants to die and dying is the only acceptable way to the patient to avoid pain and suffering — is there a basis for physician-assisted dying... Neither principle is sufficient in and of itself and, in tandem, the two principles operate as safeguards against abuse." During the 2010s, Battin contacted Allyson Mower, and together with the
Marriott Library,
Oxford University Press, and a team of librarians, library staff, research assistants, and contractors they created an unprecedented publication format containing a massive compilation of discussion on historical sources of the ethics of suicide. As the project's size approached 1200 pages in 2010, the team developed the idea of publishing a redacted print version with the full version online. Consultations with the publisher and the library led to the publication of a printed text with embedded
QR codes linking it to the web version, which itself would have catalog records, links to primary sources, and interactive features. This format combined "long-known benefits of hybrid print/electronic publishing and points to possible future directions in the relationship between publishers and libraries."
Applied ethics Battin has worked in many other areas of applied ethics. In her book
Ethics in the Sanctuary, Battin developed a method of scrutinizing the practices of organized religion. It focused on practices in different religious groups that raised issues of confidentiality, informed consent, truthtelling, and paternalism in fringe and mainline denominations. She co-authored an exploration of ethical issues in infectious disease and a study of the ethical issues of
drugs from
prescription pharmaceuticals;
over-the-counter drugs;
complementary and alternative medications or
herbal drugs; common-use drugs like
alcohol,
caffeine and
nicotine;
religious use drugs like
peyote and
ayahuasca;
sports-enhancement drugs; and illegal
street,
club, and party drugs. ==Personal life==