Comedian, actor, and disability rights activist Liz Carr has a message: assisted suicide should remain illegal in the UK. In a society where people campaign to have more rights over their bodies, and what we do with them, her stance may initially appear regressive. But Carr believes that, when it comes to disabled people, society sees assisted suicide as an easy way out – and that could be lethal for us. “If a non-disabled person wants to commit assisted suicide it’s seen as a tragedy,” she explains in her BBC One film Better Off Dead? “If a disabled person does, it’s a release.”
Over the past 20 years, there have been eight attempts to legalise assisted suicide in the UK, where it currently carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. In Scotland, a bill was drawn up in March proposing the introduction of “assisted death”. The issue isn’t going away anytime soon, and Carr has a right to be worried.
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