Lord Sumption, in a glancingly thoughtful article on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, told readers of The Times that autonomy, “…is the moral instinct that individuals are entitled to be the masters of their own fate, subject to limited and well-defined exceptions necessary for the protection of others. We owe it to our fellows to respect their autonomy. It is the necessary foundation of the kind of tolerant, liberal society in which most of us would wish to live. But it is also more than that. It is essential to their dignity as human beings.”