British MPs on Friday rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying in a knife-edge vote, a blow to campaigners in favour of the controversial procedure that is legal in a host of countries including Canada and Switzerland.
Plans to legalise assisted dying have had a long and emotional passage through parliament, with protesters on both sides of the debate regularly demonstrating in Westminster.
Lawmakers in the House of Commons had taken the historic step to back a separate but identical bill legalising the practice for some terminally ill adults last year, before that was scuppered in the unelected upper house.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was reintroduced this parliamentary session but MPs struck it down after hours of impassioned debate Friday, with 286 voting against and 270 in favour.
The bill would have allowed adults in England and Wales who have been given less than six months to live and can clearly express a wish to die the option to opt to end their own lives.
They would need the approval of two doctors and an expert panel to make the decision.
Campaigners against assisted dying celebrated the result, with Gordon Macdonald from the Care Not Killing group calling it a “decisive vote”.
He said MPs had “over the last 24 months seen through the pernicious pretence that this draft legislation was safe and wouldn’t put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives prematurely”.
Outside parliament, campaigners hoping for the change in law wiped away tears and comforted each other.
“This is a devastating setback for dying people,” said charity Dignity in Dying, adding that “this issue is not going away”.
New Prime Minister Andy Burnham had said he would sit out the vote so as to not “unduly influence the debate”.
Since becoming the country’s leader in July, Burnham has relaunched his years-long push to improve social care for the elderly and vulnerable, and has supported prioritising palliative care.
The controversial draft assisted dying legislation passed in a landmark vote in the House of Commons last June.
But it was torpedoed by more than 1,200 amendments in the unelected upper House of Lords, which was accused of obstructing and delaying the bill.
Earlier this year, lawmakers in Scotland, where health is a devolved issue, rejected a bill to legalise assisted dying.
Lawmakers in the self-governing British dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man have already approved assisted dying legislation, but the moves are awaiting royal assent.
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