"A similar notion is that the morally autonomous individual is one who obeys social norms not out of unthinking conformity, but as a result of an independent evaluation of their moral worth. John Harris identifies autonomy as the ability to control one's destiny by exercising one's faculties and John Finnis equates it with the ability to “exercise individual liberty to do what one pleases”. Judge Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, in considering the lawfulness of the Washington law against assisted suicide, stated that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life”. A common thread to emerge from these definitions, and the definition that we shall adopt, is that autonomy is the capacity of individuals “to choose both the deisrable ends of their own lives and .. the means by which they pursue those ends.”."