U.K. Parliament Votes Down Assisted Suicide Bill

U.K. lawmakers on Friday voted down a bill to legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill adults in England and Wales.

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The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was narrowly rejected, with 286 members of the House of Commons voting against the bill and 270 members voting in favor.

The bill passed the Commons last year but unelected lawmakers in the House of Lords effectively filibustered the legislation by introducing more than 1,200 amendments. Friday’s vote ends a push by proponents of assisted suicide to revive the bill.

The bill, if passed, would have allowed for patients with less than six months to live to apply for assisted suicide. Then, two doctors and a panel of experts would determine if the patient qualified, Only adults would have been able to apply for assisted suicide.

The U.K.’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, said the government is taking a neutral stance on the bill, as to not “unduly influence the debate.” Because of this, Labour Party members were able to vote freely, and Burnham was not present in Parliament during the voting. This is in stark contrast to his predecessor, former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who supported the proposed bill.

During debate, lawmaker and cancer surgeon Zubir Ahmed brought up concerns about accurately predicting the timeline of a patient’s prognosis.

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“I have to be honest. When I am asked to prognosticate on whether someone has six months to live, I am as often wrong as I am right,” Ahmed, a member of the Labour Party, said. “It is no longer a good enough marker for the DWP to use in discharging benefits for life-limiting conditions, and I do not see why it should be a good enough marker for prescribing death.”

Ashley Dalton, also a member of the Labour Party, said there is no reason to expect that without access to assisted suicide, dying will be a horrible experience.

“In the campaign around this Bill, though, it seems to me that it is being implied that a person with a terminal illness will have a dreadful, painful death unless they have access to assisted dying. That is simply not true; palliative care in the U.K. is excellent,” Dalton said.

“Far too many people do not have access to the palliative care they need, but the idea that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false. People have been terrorised—I have been terrorised—with tales of people vomiting up their own feces, as though this is commonplace during death. It is vanishingly rare … It is nothing short of irresponsible to scaremonger people like me into believing our deaths will be horrific when all the evidence suggests that, with access to good palliative care, deaths are, on the whole, gentle.”

Currently, assisted suicide is legal several countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. It is also legal in 13 U.S. jurisdictions, with a 14th state set to legalize the practice this month.

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