The assisted dying bill will not become law after MPs voted down the legislation in a dramatic U-turn on Friday after an emotional four hour debate.
The result, which saw MPs vote against the legislation by 286 to 270, is a major a setback for assisted dying campaigners and comes despite MPs having previously backed the legislation by 314 votes to 291 in the last Commons vote on the issue in June last year.
A small group of MPs cheered and pumped their fists while others could be seen hugging as the vote was read aloud.
The draft legislation had proposed allowing adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel.
Labour MP Lauren Edwards, who re-introduced the Bill after it ran out of time earlier this year, said the result was “hugely disappointing” and “heartbreaking” for those terminally ill people and their loved ones who she said had been “given hope when the Commons voted for this Bill last year”.
She had previously warned it could be another decade before the issue came before Parliament again if this legislation did not pass.
“Parliament has dropped the ball today. It will be picked up again as it must be, because the law as it stands is simply too cruel and too unjust to be allowed to stand”, she said.
Meanwhile, Dr Peter Prinsley said he is “deeply disappointed by today’s vote”, while former minister Jess Phillips told The Independent she was “devastated”, adding: “but it's not the end”.
Former broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, who is terminally ill, said it was a “tragic day”. The vocal proponent of a law change, speaking to the BBC via her daughter’s phone outside parliament, said: “I’m so sad that people in this country won’t have the choice so many terminally ill adults in other countries have of shortening their own deaths by asking for help.
“I am sure a change in the law will come. I am deeply sad that it won’t come soon enough for many of the people who need it.”
But Hospice UK’s Toby Porter said now is the time for Bill opponents and supporters to “channel their energy and passion into fixing” what he described as a “hospice funding crisis”.
Another MP could try to bring a similar Bill on the issue next year but they would have to start the whole process again from scratch as they would not be able to use rarely-employed provisions in the Parliament Acts to prevent the House of Lords from blocking it.
The Bill’s fall in the Lords in April prompted claims of a “denial of democracy” from supporters who criticised some peers for tabling hundreds of amendments and effectively talking the legislation out.
The latest vote followed a number of emotional interventions from MPs across the House, with Labour MP Ashley Dalton - who has incurable metastatic breast cancer - urging colleagues to vote down the legislation.
Meanwhile, another MP, Claire Hazelgrove spoke publicly for the first time about her mother’s decision to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end “on her terms”.
She said the “harmful status quo” meant her mother died alone in October last year, after living with a rare blood cancer for half her life.
Ms Hazelgrove argued “not all pain can be palliated”, as she spoke in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on its return to the Commons on Friday.
But Ms Dalton claimed that people with terminal diagnoses have been “scaremongered” into "believing our deaths will be horrific”.
Speaking about her own diagnosis, she said: "The last time this House considered this bill at second reading, I was keeping a secret. Whilst honourable and right honourable members were debating the issue, I was grappling with my own terminal diagnosis.
“I was told I have stage four incurable metastatic breast cancer. I was overwhelmed with grief, fear, and anxiety. I was scared of what was to come, and I was fearful of how it would impact my family and my loved ones... When you hear those words, depression, anxiety, grief, fear, shame, and guilt come in bounds. Suicide risk is highest immediately after diagnosis, and it usually falls quickly within three to six months.”
Ms Dalton argued that this bill "makes no provision to support this difficult transition or to create safeguards around it”, warning that an individual can "also be suicidal and have unmet mental health needs prior to developing a terminal illness, and then ask the state to kill them, without any assessment of their psychological health, just their mental capacity”.
She added: “The idea that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false. People have been terrorised with tales of people vomiting up their own feces as though this is commonplace during death. It is vanishingly rare, and you know, bowel obstructions are more common, but they are treatable. I know. I've had one.
"It's 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.”
Campaigners against it argued it contained inadequate safeguards and that it could result in some of society’s most vulnerable being at risk of coercion and choosing an assisted death because they feel like a burden.
Opposition to the Bill had been voiced by the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Archbishop Richard Moth, who called it “wrong in principle” and “deeply flawed” as well as the Church of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally.
Medical colleges, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych), had also raised “serious concerns” about the Bill, saying there were “too many unanswered questions about the safeguarding of people with mental illness”.
The government was neutral on the Bill and MPs voted according to their consciences rather than along party lines.
Prime minister Andy Burnham had already confirmed his intention not to vote on the Bill so as not to “unduly influence the debate”.
Read MoreDame Esther Rantzen says it is a ‘tragic day’ after assisted dying bill is rejected
