In , Elizabeth Bouvia, a year-old woman in California with a disability, tried to starve herself to death in a hospital. Doctors began force-feeding her, which she resisted. The ensuing legal case turned her into a focus of intense public attention. But she maintained that life did not feel worth living and that she found life in a hospital intolerable.
She lost her case; a court ruled that she did not have the right to die. After Bouvia lost her case, she disappeared from public view. Reid Davenport, a documentary filmmaker, wanted to know more. Davenport also has cerebral palsy, and his documentary research left him with a sense that disabled or chronically ill people who request assisted dying are often reacting to a lack of support or believe that the world does not want them.
Today, in some jurisdictions, Bouvia would have the right to die. Canada plans to begin allowing applications from people with solely mental illnesses in More than 13, Canadians died through assisted dying in — 4. California, which has a population size similar to that of Canada, had only assisted deaths in The UK is currently debating legislation to legalize assisted dying.
In , three years after she first addressed the court about her wish, a judge reversed the earlier decision. By that time, Bouvia was on treatments that would have made death by starvation excruciating.
She chose to keep living, but told the press that this was a practical decision and she still would have preferred to die. They learn that she died in , about a decade later than doctors had predicted. The interviews, plus home-video footage supplied by the family, paint a picture of a woman who benefited from technological advances and better support, was a voracious reader and seemed content, even happy.
