Liz Carr’s documentary Better Off Dead? aired on BBC One last night. Carr is an actor and disability rights campaigner who has opposed assisted suicide for many years. “These laws, I believe, will put lives like mine – marginalised lives – at risk, and those risks will be fatal”, she said. “This is terrifying.”
The documentary began powerfully with clips of various people with disabilities recalling encounters with people who assumed, because of their conditions, that they might be better off dead.
“If you are a visibly disabled person”, Carr explained, “the chances are that somebody, often a complete stranger, will have come up to you and said something like, ‘Gosh, if I was like you, I couldn’t go on… I’d rather be dead.’”
Carr met people for and against assisted suicide. In Canada, she interviewed a doctor who’d performed over 400 assisted suicides. “I love my job… This is the very best work I’ve done”, she told Carr, who looked visibly disturbed. “Let’s get out of here”, Carr said as she departed the doctor’s office.
She also met with a disabled Canadian man who, when facing homelessness because of poverty, felt he had no other choice but to go through with assisted suicide, which was approved. Only a fundraising campaign saved his life. While the waiting period for approval in Canada is 90 days for non-terminal cases, the waiting list for social housing, the man complained, can be over ten years.
Back in the UK, Carr spoke with a palliative care expert who warned that safeguarding against coercion could never be totally effective. “Coercion does happen… vulnerable being pressured into having assisted deaths… that’s the greatest harm, the most catastrophic risk, I would say, of changing the law”, the expert concluded.
Contemplating the risks, Carr said: “Would I trust a law like that where the consequences of getting it wrong … are so great? Would I trust that to a government?”
One of Carr’s disabled friends added: “What concerns me is that it [assisted suicide] will be the state’s way of saying, ‘Well, this is a cheaper alternative to giving you… support because you are too expensive to treat.’”
The prospect of any form of assisted suicide being introduced ultimately gave Carr a “shiver and a fear”. “Please, don’t allow this in the UK”, she implored viewers.
Better Off Dead? is currently available to view online on the BBC’s iPlayer.
“Timely” And “chilling”
Daniel Frampton, SPUC’s Editorial Officer, said: “Liz Carr’s documentary made a definitive case against assisted suicide by exposing its innate dangers, especially to disabled persons such as herself who have for too long been excluded from the debate.
“Campaigners for assisted suicide ignore the more than reasonable concerns of Carr who sees what is going on in Canada where thousands of vulnerable people die every year. Some of the documentary’s most unnerving moments came when pro-assisted suicide advocates so casually dismissed her fears. Carr’s interview with the doctor was especially chilling; as one viewer posted on X (formerly Twitter), ‘I found her [the doctor’s] smiling, giggling, and laughing, talking about her role of helping severe patients end their lives, very odd, and made me feel uneasy.’
“SPUC encourages its supporters to watch and share Carr’s timely documentary to spread the word about the mortal threat that assisted suicide poses to vulnerable people. At a time when such legislation is again being considered in the UK, it’s more important than ever before that the intrinsic risks of assisted suicide are exposed for everyone to see.”
