America doesn’t usually get much credit for its social safety net.
But Liz Carr, a British television personality and disability rights activist, says the US is doing something very right.
While many Western governments are making it possible for the terminally ill to end their lives with assisted suicide and euthanasia, these efforts have largely hit a roadblock in the U.S., she says.
For Carr, a wheelchair user since his teens, this is crucial as assisted dying laws put pressure on people with disabilities to end their lives prematurely and stop being ‘a burden’ on their families and caregivers.
“We have been told that these laws sweeping the West are inevitable,” Carr, 52, told DailyMail.com.
Liz Carr, 52, praises America for showing that legalizing assisted suicide is ‘not inevitable’.
‘But look what’s happening in the US. At any given time, there are bills in 25 states that would allow assisted dying, but they continue to fail. It has been at a standstill for the past three years; there is nothing inevitable about it.’
Carr is best known for playing a forensic scientist in the BBC crime drama Silent Witness. She will return to screens in the US after filming the third season of Good Omens, a fantasy comedy.
She has suffered from arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare genetic disorder of the muscles and joints, since childhood and has recently become an advocate for the rights of the disabled and against assisted dying.
Last month, she screened her documentary on the subject, Better Off Dead?, to lawmakers and influencers in Washington, DC.
Among the guests were California Congressman Lou Correa, a Democrat, and Ohio Republican Brad Wentrup.
Supporters of assisted dying say the terminally ill should be given the chance to die with the help of a doctor, by lethal injection or by getting a prescription for lethal drugs they can take at home, to end to their suffering.
But Carr and others say this has been devastating for people with disabilities in the parts of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where it is allowed.
Catholics and other religious groups are also against it on moral grounds.
Now the British parliament, long hostile to assisted dying, will consider a proposal to allow procedures before the end of 2024 – partly due to an election promise from Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
As Carr tells it, these laws make people with disabilities feel “scared and threatened.”
Liz Carr (right) plays the angel Saraqael in Good Omens, a British fantasy comedy series.
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The actress and disability rights activist is fronting a BBC documentary called Better off Dead?, which explores the legalization of assisted dying and its potential impact on vulnerable or disabled people.
“For someone who loses their job or a loved one and feels suicidal, others will rally and support them with suicide prevention help,” she says.
‘But as soon as it is a disabled or ill person, people are happy with a medically assisted death. They think it’s better to be dead than to be disabled.’
She highlights Canada, which has one of the most developed euthanasia programs in the world.
There, people with disabilities complain that they are repeatedly offered lethal injections, when all they really want is help to live and move around more easily.
In a notorious example, Christine Gauthier, a Canadian army veteran and former Paralympian, was offered physician-assisted death when she fought to have a wheelchair lift installed in her home.
“As long as we are unequal and certain groups are devalued, no safeguard will protect us,” Carr says.
Starting with Oregon in 1997, ten US states and Washington DC have made assisted suicide legal.
Patients must be at least 18 years old within six months of death and be assessed to ensure they can make an informed decision.
It is usually reserved for residents of those states, but Oregon and Vermont recently started allowing non-residents to travel and use their systems.
At least a dozen states have introduced bills this year to legalize physician-assisted death, but so far none have made it onto the law books.
This has led to heartbreaking stories from people affected by terminal illnesses, with officials urged to pass laws that will allow them to escape their suffering.
A tragic example: Ayla Eilert died in April 2022, just seven months after she was diagnosed with cancer, leaving her with an agonizing pain that doctors could not relieve.
The 24-year-old repeatedly requested a physician-assisted death, but was turned down because such procedures are not legal in her home state of New York.
Ayla was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in September 2021 and despite extensive treatment, the cancer spread throughout her body
The 52-year-old actress is known for her role as forensic investigator Clarissa Mullery in the BBC crime drama Silent Witness (pictured)
John Carney, the Democratic governor of Delaware, last month vetoed a bill allowing assisted dying in his state, saying he was “fundamentally and morally opposed” to the procedures.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Kansas and West Virginia have moved this year to strengthen their laws against assisted death.
“This tells me that people are really thinking,” says Carr.
“They don’t want to scare entire groups of people, especially those who already feel very vulnerable.”
But while most US states ban assisted suicide, some patients with cancer and other serious medical problems will continue to seek the help of a doctor to end their plight.
Last month, a 64-year-old woman from the US Midwest traveled to Switzerland and became the first person to use a “suicide capsule” in a forest in the northern Schaffhausen region, near the German border.
The 3D printed capsule is designed so that a person sitting in a reclining chair can press a button, which injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, allowing him or her to fall asleep and die from suffocation within a few minutes .
The woman who died has not been named. Members of The Last Resort group who helped her use the futuristic ‘Sarco’ pod were arrested by Swiss police. It is unclear whether the devices are legal there.
Organizers said the woman’s death was “peaceful, swift and dignified” – but those claims could not be independently verified.
The woman reportedly suffered from severe immune system problems.
A 64-year-old woman from the US Midwest traveled to Switzerland last month and became the first person to use a ‘suicide capsule’ to end her life there.
Carr questions why a U.S. citizen traveled some 4,500 miles to die in a capsule, now that Oregon and Vermont are allowing people from out of state to use their assisted dying systems.
“I’m really interested in why she felt she had to do that when she had access to assisted suicide in her own country,” Carr says.
“Maybe her conditions weren’t so serious that she didn’t qualify.”
Carr lived in the US for two years during her childhood and says she remembers the “dinners and sweets” fondly.
She is looking forward to returning to screens in the US with the third season of Good Omens, in which she plays the angel Saraqael. The British show is available in the US on Prime Video.
She will also appear in a play, Unspeakable Conversations, in London, which depicts the remarkable real-life encounter between disabled American lawyer Harriet McBryde Johnson and Princeton University bioethics professor Peter Singer.