The Fifth Estate

The Life and Death of Gloria Taylor (38x5)

: 12, 2012

Diagnosed with ALS, one woman's public fight to meet death on her own terms. Gloria Taylor was the first Canadian ever to win the right to ask a doctor for help in dying, when and how and where she wished. "The Life and Death of Gloria Taylor" documents her struggle with mortality as she fights publicly to change the law over the course of what would be the last year of her life. Doomed by ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Gloria Taylor became dependent on medical technology. Her fight for life was futile, and she could only hope for what she called a dignified ending. the fifth estate's Linden MacIntyre first met her more than a year ago as she battled with a disease that has no cure, and had just begun another struggle in British Columbia's Supreme Court to have the right to decide the time and manner of her death. She agreed to let the fifth estate follow her throughout that struggle, the private highs and lows, and the personal indignities throughout the final year of her life. In her many conversations with the fifth estate, Taylor maintained that she didn't want to kill herself and she didn't want anybody else to do it for her. It was just an option she wanted, a last resort. "The Life and Death of Gloria Taylor" chronicles her perseverance, her final victory in court, the backlash that threatened to take her victory away and in the end the peaceful death she had always wished for.