Assisted dying: This is the biggest societal change in half a century – and transforms how we talk about death forever

It is the biggest societal change in more than half a century.

Terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of six months or less will for the first time be allowed an assisted death to end their suffering.

Kim Leadbeater’s bill has cleared the first and most important hurdle. And unless there’s a dramatic intervention it is expected to become law.

There have been few issues more polarising or more controversial than this one. And as the day of the vote neared, the debates raging online, on TV and on radio became more bitter and more heated.

MPs back assisted dying – follow live

Those deeply entrenched on both sides were never going to shift their positions, guided either by religion, ethics or the personal experience of seeing a loved one wither away during a prolonged, agonising death.

Ultimately, they did not matter. Yes, they would lobby their MPs at hastily convened town halls and make their feelings felt, but in the end each individual MP likely voted according to their own conscience.

Read more:
What the proposal involves

Ms Leadbeater’s job, to get her bill over the line, was to convince the dozens of undecided MPs her proposal would stand up to any and all scrutiny. They proved crucial in deciding the bill’s fate.

She said from the very start her proposed legislation carried the greatest safeguards of an assisted dying framework anywhere in the world.

She successfully countered the slippery slope argument – her biggest challenge – by saying poor models like Canada had been studied closely to ensure the same mistakes would not be repeated here.

There would be no extensions to include more groups – the vulnerable, including the disabled and mentally ill, as Canada has done.

Instead, the UK would learn, she said, from good practice employed by the American state of Oregon, where the rules around assisted dying have remained unchanged since its introduction in 1997.

And Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act – just as Ms Leadbeater has proposed here – confines eligibility to adults with a terminal illness and life expectancy of six months or less.

The other major argument Leadbeater had to win was to prove to the undecided the introduction of assisted dying in this country would not further erode the quality of palliative care services.

And this one would have proved as difficult as countering the slippery slope argument. Ranged against her were some of the most powerful clinical voices in palliative care. And they were supported by the health secretary who chose to break with protocol with two interventions setting out his opposition to the bill.

Ms Leadbeater’s case was Britain should and must have both – good palliative care services for all alongside an assisted dying programme.

We do not know how assisted dying will be funded or how it will be carried out. Those assessments are yet to be made.

This means the MPs who supported the bill believe Leadbeater’s vision or think palliative care is in such crisis that a solution is to offer patients a deserving and dignified end to their suffering, something not currently offered by end-of-life NHS care. At least, not to everyone.

The issue has fostered meaningful and reasoned debate. There have been thoughtful, coherent arguments on both sides.

Read more:
Five stories bringing the assisted dying debate home
Two terminally ill people give views on assisted dying

And one thing it has achieved is the recognition that we as a country do not talk about death enough. That has changed forever and that can only be a good thing.

This bill gives people faced with a bleak future complete autonomy over the most important aspect of their life – the end of it.

There are countless families who have witnessed their loved ones dying the cruellest of deaths.

Nothing can mitigate the loss of a loved one, but at least future generations will now be spared the pain of standing by helplessly and witnessing the torment.