It was a conscious decision.
They made it together, as they had every decision since the genocide of the human race. They were the leaders. The rulers. The hope in a populace wrought with futility.
And no one was going to replace them.
The technology was radical and untested. They knew that, and did it anyway. It was the good of their people, after all. And the procedure would ensure them years extended onto their lives, with which they could use to (hopefully) save humanity. Or what was left of it.
They had no regrets.It was only at night, skin slick with sweat, bodies sliding against one another's, that William Adama and Laura Roslin's quest for immortality presented itself.
Only then, when their spines glowed with the red-hot fire of Cylon blood.