Disabled people feel “frightened and threatened” by Assisted Suicide warns TV star Liz Carr

Image credit: BBC / Burning Bright Productions Ltd

As the UK and Ireland edge closer to legalising assisted suicide laws, TV star and disability rights activist Liz Carr has spoken out, warning against assisted suicide saying that such laws make disabled people feel “frightened and threatened”.

She further praised the U.S.  for withstanding attempts to make assisted suicide legal in multiple states.

Since childhood, Carr has suffered with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare genetic disorder that affects the joints and muscles, which has left her in a wheelchair since she was a teenager. Carr is best known for her role as a forensic scientist in the BBC crime drama Silent Witness, and also features in the US fantasy comedy Good Omens.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Carr praised America, who during the many attempts to make assisted suicide legal in multiple states, have continuously hit roadblocks, with two states, Kansas and West Virginia, seeking to tighten their laws against assisted suicide.

'We're told that these laws sweeping the West are inevitable,' she said. 'But look at what's happening in the US. At any one time, there are bills in 25 states to allow assisted dying, but they continue to fail. For the past three years, it's been at a standstill — there's nothing inevitable about it.'

'This tells me that people are really thinking,' she added. 'They don't want to make whole groups of people feel afraid, especially those who already feel very vulnerable.'

Carr also pointed out that experiences have been “terrible” for disabled people in parts of the world where assisted suicide is legal, such as countries in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Canada currently has the most developed Euthanasia programs and has also been under scrutiny after multiple complaints from disabled people who have been offered assisted suicide when they wanted help to live.

One such example is that of Christine Gauthier, who after suffering permanent damage to her spine and knees after an army training accident, was offered assisted suicide when she was getting frustrated over the delays in getting a chair lift in her home.

'I was like, 'I can't believe that you will … give me an injection to help me die, but you will not give me the tools I need to help me live,'' Gauthier said. 'It was really shocking to hear that kind of comment.' 

Another case is that of Roger Foley who has been repeatedly pressured by doctors to avail of assisted suicide, when he has said he wants to live and has repeatedly asked for assisted living.

Carr has also said that assisted suicide laws have left disabled people 'frightened and threatened.'

'For somebody who loses their job or a loved one and is left feeling suicidal, others will rally around and support them with suicide prevention help,' she says. 'But as soon as that's a disabled or ill person, people think it's fine for them to have a medically-assisted death. They think it's better to be dead than to be disabled.'

The UK are looking at a proposal to make assisted suicide legal before Christmas, which according to the Daily Mail is a pre-election pledge from Primer Minister Keir Starmer. This week, Dáil Eireann will also be voting on a report from the Joint Oireachtas Committee that recommends making assisted suicide legal under “certain restrictions”.

However, the High Court in the Fleming case in 2023 said that “even with the most rigorous systems of legislative checks and safeguards, it would be impossible to ensure that the aged, the disabled, the poor, the unwanted, the rejected, the lonely, the impulsive, the financially compromised and emotionally vulnerable would not avail of this option to avoid a sense of being a burden to their family and society.”

Carr had also spoken with the Daily Mail earlier this year, expressing that it was not safe to legalise assisted suicide in the UK, due to the inequalities that disabled people face.

'As long as there's inequality, it is not safe to legalise' assisted suicide,” she said. 'No amount of safeguards will prevent us from mistakes and abuse and coercion, that's my belief.

“On an everyday basis, disabled people are dealing with a lower expectation and people actually saying to their faces: "Gosh, surely it's better to be dead than be you?" she added. 'That happens. It's shocking. So I wanted that to be the starting point and then let's unravel why that is and how that leads to my fear of legalising assisted suicide.”

As people often claim that assisted suicide is “compassionate”, using it to end the suffering of the person who wants to die, Carr also pointed out that 'of course we don't want [a person at the end of their life] to suffer'.

She continued: 'The problem is, actually, a lot of disabled people do suffer. But what they suffer from are the barriers and the obstacles, the fact they have to fight for support, the fact there isn't social care, the fact of attitudes, the fact of lack of access to so many things.

'You know, we do suffer. So don't then make it legal to end that suffering through assisted suicide, that's the fear.'

Carr has also recently launched a BBC documentary “Better off Dead?” that provides the argument against assisted suicide as she travels to Canada to explore it’s assisted suicide law, and speaks with a range of campaigners in the UK on both sides of the argument.  

Sandra Parda of the Life Institute commented saying: “It’s powerful witnesses like Ms Carr’s that shed light on the reality of what assisted suicide can do if it were made legal. We are all human beings, deserving of life, and the value of our lives is not determined by the amount we suffer, by our age or our ability, but by the very fact that we are human. Legalising assisted suicide will only set a precedent that some people don’t have that value.”