FAITH DID WHAT? Faith Sommerfield’s (Final) Trip to Switzerland

Bioethics

Please join us!

In 2022, at the age of 82, Faith Sommerfield took a private jet to a clinic in Switzerland to bring her life to an end.

She did what? Was she crazy? Was this immoral? Was it suicide? Faith wasn’t terminally ill, and she wasn’t suffering in any serious sense. These questions about what Faith did raise serious policy issues about “safeguards” embedded in Medical Aid in Dying laws in 13 U.S. states and D.C. as well as some 14 other countries, where one must be terminally ill, or enduring intolerable suffering, or, in some places, both.

This talk will explore how these safeguards are paradoxical at root, not to be discarded but reconsidered in a basic way. Drawing on personal contact, psychiatric interviews, and the Completed Life Initiative, which Faith founded, this talk explores philosophic issues around clinician-aided “preemptive” death. This may explain why, and when, Faith Sommerfield went to Switzerland to die, according to her conception of “a completed life.” She did what? She couldn’t have done it legally here in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world.

The Completed Life Initiative hosts this annual lecture in partnership with Columbia University’s M.S. in Bioethics program in commemoration of Faith Sommerfield, the late founder of the Completed Life Initiative. The lecture serves as both a tribute and a platform to advance critical conversations around end-of-life care, personal autonomy, and the right to die with dignity.

Timeline:

Doors open at 5:45 p.m.

Lecture runs from 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public.

SEATING FOR THIS EVENT IS ON A FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE BASIS.

Speaker:

Margaret Pabst Battin, nicknamed Peggy, is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Utah and the recipient of the American Association for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Lifetime Achievement Award, 2025. The author of The Least Worst Death and Sex and the Planet, among many other works, she has been named “one of the mothers of bioethics.”

Registration Information:

Registration for this event closes on Wednesday, September 23rd or when capacity is reached.

Guests who have not registered in advance and do not have an active Columbia University ID (CUID) will not be permitted on campus. Upon arrival, all registered guests must show:

CUID holders: a government-issued ID and active Columbia University ID
Non-CUID holders: a government-issued ID and the QR code issued by CU Guest Access prior to the event. This QR code is valid only for this event and the name must match that on the guest’s government-issued ID.

For more information about the Completed Life Initiative, please visit their website www.completedlife.org

For questions about this event, please contact Marie Gugnishev (mg4441 [[at]] columbia [[dot]] edu).

For more information about the Columbia School of Professional Studies Program in Bioethics, please visit www.sps.columbia.edu/academics/masters/bioethics Columbia University’s Hub for Emergency Preparedness

To obtain additional information about program offerings at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, please contact inquire [[at]] sps [[dot]] columbia [[dot]] edu.

If you require closed captioning, sign-language interpretation, or other accommodations, please contact disability [[at]] columbia [[dot]] edu, at least 10 days in advance. Services requested less than 10 days in advance cannot be guaranteed.

This event is open to individuals irrespective of identity and sex.

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