‘Better Off Dead?’ documentary sharpens suicide prevention focus
English actress and international disability rights activist Liz Carr, who produced and stars in the 2024 BBC documentary "Better Off Dead?", speaks in the U.S. Congress on Sept. 18, 2024. / Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 23, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Last week, the first screening in the U.S. of the BBC documentary “Better Off Dead?” took place in the United States Congress.
Produced by British actress and renowned disability rights advocate Liz Carr, the film shows from a secular perspective how assisted-suicide laws around the world threaten the lives of individuals with disabilities.
Carr, who is not religious, told CNA that for many people, the absence of nonreligious arguments against assisted suicide has disadvantaged the cause.
“I think that for too long, opposition to assisted suicide has been marginalized, sidelined as being pretty much religious, only religious. And therefore, it’s been seen as not valid by some people,” she said, “depending on the perspective.”
Carr makes the case that assisted suicide “becomes an ultimate discrimination against certain groups of people” who may not have a voice.
“If you’re a disabled person,” she said, “often if you come under these laws, then what happens is you pretty much fast-track to encouragement, to be assisted, to end your life rather than receiving suicide prevention.”
Ultimately, she argued, assisted-suicide laws suggest “that some lives are more important than others,” an idea that stems from the commonly held position that having a disability is “a fate worse than death.”
The central point of ‘Better Off Dead?’
Carr explained to CNA that the central point of the documentary “Better Off Dead?” is to counteract this position, showing that life has value regardless of whether an individual has full functional control of his or her body.
Carr since age 7 has been disabled due to arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare genetic condition affecting joints and muscles, and has used a wheelchair since age 14. As a young girl, she recalled, the absence of imagery of disabled people living valuable lives had at times led her to wonder whether nonexistence was better than existence for a disabled person.
“The dominant ideas [regarding the issue] are that in order to be a valuable human being, you should be able to walk and do basic tasks for yourself,” she said. “Well then when I couldn’t do those things, when I never saw people like me in the media doing anything other than being cared for and living in care homes, of course I would want to die.”
“To imagine that, and then to see now, you know, I’m sitting on a beautiful terrace in Washington, D.C.,” she said, continuing: “There is no way that when I was 12, I would imagine 40 years later at 52 what my life would be like.”
“How many lives did we lose because people feel hopeless?” she speculated. “And what could we have done to have alleviated that suffering and that hopelessness?”
In comments to CNA after the screening, co-sponsored by the National Council on Disability, the Patients Rights Action Fund, and Not Dead Yet, Matt Vallière of the Patients Rights Action Fund expressed appreciation for Carr’s “phenomenal documentary” and optimism regarding the current climate for stopping and reversing assisted-suicide laws in the U.S.
“With Democratic Gov. [John] Carney vetoing the assisted-suicide bill in Delaware,” Vallière stated, “we are poised as a movement to see three years in a row of no new states legalizing assisted suicide and seeing increasing bipartisan opposition to these dangerous and discriminatory public policies.”
“A myriad of stories of abuse and harms [are] coming out of legal jurisdictions, here in the states, just north in Canada, and abroad, as well as a major federal lawsuit levied against the state of California by progressive disability-rights groups,” Vallière pointed out, noting that legislators on both sides of the aisle have begun “having second thoughts about these insidious laws.”
Bipartisan resolution
Testifying to that bipartisan sentiment, Reps. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, and Lou Correa, D-California, also spoke at the screening.
The two representatives introduced a resolution in May “expressing the sense of the Congress that assisted suicide (sometimes referred to using other terms) puts everyone, including those most vulnerable, at risk of deadly harm.”
The two lauded Carr for her transformative activism, with Wenstrup, who is a physician, declaring that “to support this case is a no-brainer.”
“Until that last breath is taken, human life has value,” Wenstrup emphasized.
The Ohio congressman told the story of his father’s passing, noting that in his final days, his dad began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. He speculated that had his father’s death been expedited, this spiritual moment may not have occurred.
“We gotta respect life,” he concluded.
Correa, a Catholic, agreed, stating his belief in the “moral responsibility” of legislators to facilitate heightened access to resources such as palliative care for those with terminal illnesses rather than opening the door to medically-assisted death.
Speaking with CNA after the event, Carr expressed her gratitude to the representatives for attending and showing their support, saying “it gave real importance” to the issue.
“These appearances matter,” she said. “It matters that representatives, you know, whichever country we’re in, that are our lawmakers and politicians, that they engage with these issues.”
