Liz Carr Faces Off With the Assisted Dying Debate
When Liz Carr speaks about assisted dying, her words pack a punch. She doesn't leave much room for comfort, especially in the new BBC documentary, Better Off Dead?. Carr, a well-known actor and outspoken disability rights activist, jumps straight into the messy reality behind proposed assisted dying laws in the UK. For her, it's deeply personal: she has arthrogryposis, uses a wheelchair, and has watched friends fight for their right to live with dignity—not to be quietly ushered toward death.
What's got Carr worried? She says legalizing assisted dying in the UK could open the doors to all sorts of risks for people like her. Systemic bias, she warns, already sits heavy on disabled and marginalized groups. She points to real-world cases and statistics, reminding viewers that the so-called "safeguards" in similar international laws haven't always worked as intended. In places like Canada, the issue has become much more than a philosophical argument about personal choice.
Unpacking Canada's MAID Law: When Suffering Is About More Than Illness
To get a handle on the risks, Carr travels to Canada—home to one of the world's most permissive assisted dying policies, known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). Unlike most countries, Canada allows people who aren't terminally ill to access a state-sanctioned death if they're suffering in ways deemed 'intolerable.' Theoretically, it's meant to empower patients. In practice, Carr hears from Canadians for whom the system feels deeply flawed.
Some people request MAID not because they're dying, but because they can't get the right disability support, accessible housing, or even basic financial assistance. Carr introduces heartbreaking stories: a disabled woman who, after exhausting all government services, saw MAID as the only way out, and a man with a chronic condition facing eviction, not the final stages of an illness.
The message is clear—poverty and a lack of support often push people toward choices they might never make if they lived in a truly supportive society. For Carr, this isn't hypothetical. She asks bluntly: "Why is death being easier to access than a ramp, a job, or a support worker?"
To tackle the complex web of opinions, Carr interviews a wide range of figures. She sits down with Dr. Katherine Sleeman, a respected voice in palliative care, who explains the limits of end-of-life medicine and the dangers of stretching MAID beyond its original intent. She also speaks with Melanie Reid, a columnist and a pro-assisted dying advocate, for a challenging but respectful debate that underscores the need for nuance in a heated conversation.
Some critics of Carr's work note that terminally ill advocates for assisted dying don't get much airtime. Carr doesn't dodge this point. She says her focus is the gap in the debate around disability, poverty, and support systems. Her story started as a response to Terry Pratchett's 2011 documentary in favor of assisted dying—she felt the disabled perspective was missing. For Carr, it's always been less about philosophical arguments, and more about the lived realities of the most vulnerable.
The documentary doesn't try to end the debate but instead throws down a challenge: What if societies put as much effort into giving people reasons to live as they do into making death accessible?
