By twelve votes, the Scottish parliament rejected the assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill on March 17.
The debate that preceded it was emotionally charged and, at moments, genuinely moving. MSPs spoke of parents, partners, faith and fear. Much of it turned on the contents of the bill – safeguards, eligibility criteria and conscience clauses. The structural conditions in which terminally ill people in Scotland actually make decisions received less attention, and what attention they did receive struggled to translate into demands that any future legislation must meet.
Scotland is an unequal place to live. In its most deprived communities, life expectancy has been falling since 2013; a gap of more than 13 years now separates the richest and the poorest. And the people at the bottom of that gap do not simply die younger.
