Occupation Ethicist Name Margaret Somerville | Role Professor | |
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Books The Ethical Imagination, Death talk, The Ethical Canary, Public Health and Epidemio, Body/Landscape Journals | ||
Questioning euthanasia prof margaret somerville
Margaret Anne Ganley Somerville, AM, FRSC (born April 13, 1942) is Professor of Bioethics at University of Notre Dame Australia. She was previously Samuel Gale Professor of Law at McGill University.
Contents
- Questioning euthanasia prof margaret somerville
- Professor margaret somerville
- Honours
- Involvement in same sex marriage debate
- References
Somerville was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and educated at Mercedes College (Springfield, South Australia). She received a A.u.A. (pharm.) from the University of Adelaide in 1963, a Bachelor of Law degree (Hons. I) and the University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1973, and a D.C.L. from McGill University in 1978.
In 1978, she was appointed assistant professor in the law faculty at McGill. She was appointed an associate professor in 1979 and an associate professor in the faculty of medicine in 1980. In 1984, she became a full professor in both faculties, and in 1989, she was appointed the Samuel Gale Professor of Law. From 1986 to 1996, she was the founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law and was appointed acting director in 1999. She currently teaches seminars on advanced torts and comparative medical law at McGill.
In November 2006, she gave the five annual Massey Lectures on CBC Radio in Canada. An expanded version of the lectures was published in Canada, Australia, and the United States in book form as The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit.
Professor margaret somerville
Honours
Among many honours and awards, in 1990, Somerville was made a Member of the Order of Australia "for service to the law and to bioethics". In 1991, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2004 she was chosen by an international jury as the first recipient of UNESCO's Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science.
She has received honorary degrees from University of Windsor (1992), Macquarie University (1993), St. Francis Xavier University (1996) and the University of Waterloo (2004). Her honorary degree awarded June 19, 2006, at Ryerson University in Toronto was controversial because of her objections to same sex marriage. She has since received honorary degrees from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (2009), St. Mark's College, Vancouver (2010) and the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario (2013).
In 2006, Somerville was nominated for membership in the Order of Canada by Carol Finlay, a professor at the Toronto School of Theology. Finlay says Somerville was turned down for the honour because she was "too controversial."
Involvement in same-sex marriage debate
Somerville presented both a brief and an oral presentation to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada in 2003. She later modified her own Wikipedia entry to remove references to her being “a Roman Catholic apologist”.