UK vote brings 'massive relief' to terminally-ill woman haunted by partner's death

By Sarah Young and Marissa Davison

Jenny Carruthers watched her partner die in agony from cancer that had spread to his bones. Now diagnosed with the same condition, she is hopeful that a vote in favour of assisted dying in Britain will permit her a more peaceful death.

"I watched my partner die in uncontrollable agony and it looks like I'm going to be facing the same future. We need this," Carruthers, 56, said, as she recalled her partner "screaming in bed" in his final days.

British lawmakers voted in favour of a new bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults with less than six months left to live on Friday, launching a process to change the law and bring in one of the biggest social reforms in a generation.

Speaking in Parliament Square surrounded by supporters of assisted dying who gathered to celebrate the result, Carruthers said it was a "massive relief".

Since her own diagnosis, Carruthers, from Bath in south west England, said she had found the thought of going through her partner's ordeal "very frightening" and she dreaded the impact it would have on her children.

Her sons were fully supportive of her wishes for an assisted death, she added, and she was planning a quiet celebration with them this evening.

While she is currently well and her treatment is working, she hopes that by the time she needs it, the legislation will be in place for her to choose "a peaceful, kind, shortened death".

The vote in favour of the bill kicks off months of further debate and it will now make its way through both House of Commons and the upper house of parliament, the House of Lords. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour lawmaker who introduced the bill, has said she expects the process to take a further six months.

"There are a lot of people who it is going to help. Hopefully, I will be one of them," Carruthers said.