By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. But as Davenport articulates both in his statement referenced above and throughout his passionate and persuasive film, the question of whether disabled people deserve the right to die is also a question of whether they are afforded the ability to live.
Davenport himself speaks from a place of experience, which makes him uniquely positioned to tell this story. The film opens with archival footage of Elizabeth Bouvia appearing in court.
As one headline noted at the time: She was young, beautiful and wanted to die. She lost the case. Bouvia is just one character in this story. Though he works, the cost of full time care would be too much, and the only other option would be going to a facility that feels like an incarceration. But while the film begins with an empathy for why people might want to die, it slowly begins to uncover the systematic failures that make those with disabilities believe it is their only option. By structuring the narrative in this way, Davenport slyly challenges the supposedly good liberal decision about assisted suicide as an act of compassion.
What begins as a slow prodding of assumptions ultimately ends up a full throated condemnation of systems that would rather have disabled people die than invest in the healthcare required to enhance their lives. His wife, Melissa, heartbroken and angry at his loss, provides some of the most moving testimony. Davenport is solely focused on the topic of assisted suicide as it relates to disability. He is not interested in diving into how it applies to terminal illness at all. Davenport is considered in how he inserts himself on screen.
Occasionally during the interviews, you see his curly hair bobbing on the side of the screen, a reminder of his vested interest.
