The disabled woman's struggle to starve in New Doc (exclusive)

A person with poor health diagnosis or an unbearable level of pain seems to be an act of mercy for some people.

But what would happen if the government decided that someone deserves the right to die with a disability? The filmmaker Reid Davenport confronts this question in his new documentary Live afterEspecially through the history of Elizabeth Bouvia, a California woman with cerebral palsy who sought legal law at the age of 26 to starve to death.

This was in 1983, and some television programs questioned why someone who was young and beautiful wanted to end their lives. She said she wanted to die because she had not received the right to live in a society with a health structure that estimated the end result of her well -being.

Davenport, which also has cerebral palsy, and his producing partner at Multitude Films, Colleen Cassingham Live afterwhat is now playing in selected theaters.

Bouvia articulated her clashes well when her case pulled to court – she had pain, tired and bureaucracy – but the state finally stood for the hospital, which said that he could not reveal his oath not to damage any damage at first. What happened to this so -called pioneer in the right movement after the end of the case?

That is the question that Davenport answered when he started working on it Live after. In the history of Bouvias, the documentary expanded Canadian guidelines are examined, which almost enable anyone who uses disabilities for the dying, why some disabled people have made the difficult decision to die, and how lawyers for maids (medical help with dying) defend the expansion of the guidelines of people with a terminal diagnosis.

The film increasingly different voices and points of view such as Melissa Hickson, who says that her husband Michael Hickson has been denied life -saving care because the doctors decided that his quality of life was too low, and Catherine Frazee, a professor who can not address the suffering of human suffering by killing people. One participant, Michal Kaliszan, describes how he considered assisted death after his mother, who was his primary caretaker, had died, and he could no longer afford the care he needed.

During the work on the documentary, Cassingham had to navigate a shift in the introduction of activism to the nominal value as progressiveism in order to fully understand the effects of the use of all disabled people.

“I thought assisted dying was really about personal choice and physical autonomy, values that I am deeply committed,” she tells the people. “And when I learned from Reid and in the work of this film, I realized that the picture gives as much more as it actually works in society, and it is deeply connected to the way we appreciate and do not appreciate certain life, and a deeply sitting distance that is so much of society.”

In the course of Live afterWhen Davenport searches for Bouvia's family and finds out whether she is still alive, two topics arise: The focus on the right to death guidelines ignores that so many disabled people do not live the right and that a person decides what is a good quality of life for someone else.

“The topics in the center of this film are not a niche, they are not particularly for the disability community. Things like healthcare, isolation and the way we appreciate other human lives are universal,” says Cassingham. “Everyone has a share in the struggle for a society that invests in care and maintain the dignity of the other in the systems we build and live.”

Finally, Davenport Bouvia's sisters localized Teresa and Rebecca and convinces them to appear in front of the camera to talk about their siblings, which died in 2014. Encouraging the couple to open up over Bouvia was not easy, but Davenport's authenticity and transparency.

“Their main concern was that Elizabeth's reputation and decisions were questioned again, and we made sure that this was not our intention,” says Davenport. “Basically, you try to meet them with the audience where they were and they don't force them.”

Since Teresa and Rebecca tell stories about Bouvia's life after the 1980s, while the film visits people who have used or consider Maid, it becomes clear that the assisted death can have their place in the medical system. As Davenport sees it, the discussions should be treated carefully if the focus is on people with disabilities.

“We should ask: 'How can we make disabled people possible to live?' And support them and allow them to make opportunities, “he says. “There is this uncanny perspective that we are a burden that we will absorb money. So there is this underlying incentive for the health industry to choose the assisted suicide.”

He continues: “What I would encourage people to check how we can improve people with disabilities instead of letting them die.”

Towards the end of the film, Davenport fills out the application for Canada's Maid program to see how easy or difficult it would be to qualify for him. What begins as a funny exercise becomes scary when it fits with flying colors. He reflects on this and about all the people he has met and who went the same way, and says he cannot imagine how different he has his life without support, care and passion he has.

At a particularly moving moment, Cassingham agrees that her quality of life is greatly reduced without these things, but because she has no disability, she would not be given the opportunity to die for this reason.

“The quality of life does not have much to do with the skills of our body. If someone is hindered or aged, there is a real examination of what this means, because society has told us that what is productive and able to enjoy life to enjoy our body and our ability to do certain things,” she says. “But for me I experienced a real detection of the disability as a natural part of the material of human experience.”

“I learn that the quality of life lives somewhere else, and it affects people around them, it's about being loved and giving love and care,” added Cassingham. “And these are things that we all have access to when we live in a society, is promoted in nursing and relationships and interdependence are valued and promoted.”

While Bouvia's life quickly fell out of the news cycle according to her pioneering legal proceedings, Davenport's film raises the question of the law again through the sweet memories of Bouvia's sisters, home video film material and the context of many others who decide to die or ask why it is even an option.

Live after now plays in selected theaters