‘Life After’ Review: Reid Davenport’s Powerfully Constructed Look at Right-to-Die Policy

Reid Davenport’s Life After is about bodies, specifically the inconvenient bodies that society is seemingly bent on eliminating rather than accommodating. Case in point is Elizabeth Bouvia, the quadriplegic portal through which Davenport dives deep into a topic that both liberals and libertarians love to champion: assisted dying.

The documentary opens with early-’80s footage of the fiercely determined California woman navigating her electric wheelchair through a courtroom where she fights for her “right to die.” It’s a battle she would ultimately lose, and one imagines that her subsequent disappearance from public view was partially informed by her having to endure condescending questions from the likes of a “creepy Mike Wallace,” as Davenport spot-on notes at one point.

What happened to the media-friendly, if reluctant, activist had been a mystery nagging at Davenport, who likewise has cerebral palsy, for a decade. Which in turn launched this very personal investigation to locate Bouvia or her family to find out if she was still alive, and, if so, if she was doing okay. Perhaps, then, Davenport could even pose to her a question that a straight, white, non-disabled 60 Minutes host would never think to ask: Would she have chosen “death with dignity” if society had offered her “life with dignity” instead?

While searching for Bouvia, Davenport traveled throughout the United States and up to Canada to speak with folks on the frontlines of the assisted dying debate. Among those he encountered were Bouvia’s sisters, the wife of a disabled Austin man removed from a ventilator against her wishes, the grassroots organizer of the New York City activist group Not Dead Yet, a disability justice advocate, and a disabled computer programmer in Ontario. Along the way, we’re reminded that North American countries with histories that include Black enslavement, Native American genocide, and the forced sterilization of disabled people popularized by eugenics might not be best equipped to “assist” those who wish to die—or think they wish to die.

“Segregation is part of the trauma of being disabled,” Davenport says of institutionalization, a physical and psychological torture that Bouvia had been far too familiar with. Later, after his filming is stopped by a cop who asks if he needs help, he adds, “Disabled people aren’t threatened by their bodies. They’re threatened by other people’s bodies.” In fact, what’s actually most remarkable about Life After may be Davenport’s ability to subtly connect the experience of the disabled community with that of marginalized diaspora groups at large.

For media coverage of Bouvia repeatedly described her as being “trapped in a useless body”—the allusion to being “trapped” in a body as loaded as the word “segregation.” Which brings us to the thorny question of who the assisted dying movement is actually serving in today’s broken healthcare system: individuals or the medical industrial complex?

When insurance won’t cover the cost of basic needs like help at home to eat or bathe, a quick and painless death can look like an attractive option—for the disabled person and for society’s bottom line. After Canada approved Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), a government report revealed that the measure had saved taxpayers close to 150 million dollars. (Or as one disabled rally-goer’s banner reads: “Assisted suicide—the world’s cheapest healthcare.”)

Indeed, it’s always easier to burden the victims than the system. And Davenport is dead-set, so to speak, on shifting the blame to where it belongs. After all, as a no-nonsense disabled rights advocate points out, “You can’t address human suffering by killing people.”

Unfortunately, addressing human suffering may not actually be the point. For society also fears the nonconforming body—be it disabled, nonwhite, or queer. But since traits such as skin color and sexuality are immutable, the populace in power doesn’t ever have to specifically fear becoming a member of those marginalized groups.

Disability, of course, is different. As the passionate and powerfully constructed Life After closes, we finally hear from Bouvia’s own writing that she wasn’t in fact “trapped” in her body, but “trapped in the bureaucratic system on which I am dependent.” And in the end, aren’t we all.