𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Jersey will become the second place in the British Isles to legalise assisted dying, allowing terminally ill people to “live more of their life”. The island’s States Assembly on Thursday gave final approval to an assisted dying bill, with 32 members voting in favour and 16 against.

The landmark legislation will now move forward for Royal Assent, and a service could be in place by summer 2027. Jersey resident Lorna Pirozzolo, 49, lives with incurable breast cancer and has campaigned to change the law for four years. She said the historic decision would free terminally ill people from the fear of an agonising death.

She added: “Even though it shortens the process of their death a little bit, they live more of their life.

“I’m a cancer patient advocate in Jersey and I’ve talked to loads of friends in the weeks prior to their death. People stop living because of the fear of what’s going to come.

“Some stop living as early as six months from death because of the fear. They think, ‘I’m coping now but this is just going to get worse and worse’.”

Lorna said the law change meant “giving people back life and letting them live right up until the end, because they’re not having to fear that they’re going to be in excruciating pain, that they’re going to be vomiting up faeces, all these hideous things that people go through”.

Only terminally ill, mentally competent adults who have resided in Jersey for at least 12 months will be eligible under the bill.

Lorna was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in April 2018, which progressed to stage four in January 2019. She also suffered from severe acute pancreatitis — inflammation of the pancreas, causing intense abdominal pain — for three years.

Lorna said: “The two together led me to get involved in assisted dying. There was a local doctor with an anti-assisted dying website claiming that all pain could be made better.

“But the only way they could make my pain any better was to put me in a coma, because of the amount of pain I was in.

“You couldn’t beat it for a few seconds, never mind minutes, hours, days. I was screaming at a nurse to kill me, there were no drugs that could help with that.”

Lorna’s gallbladder was removed, and she now manages her pain at home, taking morphine when it flares up.

Cancer is a constant presence in her life, but knowing she will have the option of an assisted death, should she want it, has brought comfort.

Lorna joined campaigners outside the States Building in St Helier on Thursday. Speaking to the Express minutes after the final vote, she said she planned to raise a glass of whiskey to her friends who did not live to see this day.

Lorna added: “It’s absolutely amazing. I’m feeling just so much relief. We know that it’s what the majority of islanders want. There’s no doubt about that. And people who don’t want it, they don’t have to have it.

“I’m really proud of the way most of our states members handled it, and especially the scrutiny panel, the team that put the law together. It is a very, very well-written and very safe piece of legislation.”

Jersey follows the Isle of Man, which approved an assisted dying Bill in March 2025.

The Welsh parliament also voted this week in favour of fair and equal implementation of any assisted dying law passed by Westminster.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill — backed by the Express Give Us Our Last Rights campaign — is now almost certain to fall due to a small minority of peers filibustering and delaying progress in the House of Lords.

However, supporters plan to bring the legislation back to Parliament in the next session, which could see it passed without the Lords’ consent under the Parliament Act.

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “Compassion has won out in Jersey, in a week that demonstrates undeniable momentum for change right across the UK and Crown Dependencies. Today’s historic result will bring profound relief to so many.

“This Friday, the House of Lords will return to its scrutiny of the Terminally Ill Adults Bill, with public and parliamentary pressure mounting on the handful of unelected opponents deliberately obstructing its passage.

“This progress is proof of the humble tenacity of dying people, families and the wider public, who simply will not give up until their Parliament acts. The time for choice and compassion on our shores has well and truly arrived.”