LONDON: 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”.