LONDON — The story of Keira Ball, a sprightly 9 year old, did not end in the summer of 2017, when she was fatally injured in a car accident in England. Her parents consented to donating her organs, saving the life of Max Johnson, also 9, whose heart was failing because of an infection.

Pictures of these two children, who never met in life, have been on newspaper front pages and news broadcasts in Britain this week, the most highly publicized of the cases that have helped win passage of what has been called Max and Keira’s law. It is intended to boost Britain’s low rate of organ donations by making most adults presumed organ donors by 2020.

Under the new system, which was expected to win final approval in Parliament on Tuesday, adults living in England, with narrow exceptions, would be considered potential donors unless they had expressed objections. Wales already has a presumed consent or “opt-out” system, and on Tuesday, Scotland’s Parliament debated a bill to create a similar one.

“Although we’d never discussed organ donation, I knew it was what Keira would have wanted,” her father, Joe Ball, told the BBC. “It was in her nature.”

The House of Commons has approved the presumed consent bill. It was set for its third and final consideration on Monday evening by the House of Lords, which rarely intervenes at that late stage.

Countries that have presumed consent generally have higher donation rates than those with opt-in systems, which take organs only from people who have stated a wish to donate, or whose families approve after they have died. In the United States, people must fill out forms or join an online registry to donate organs, or their families must give approval.

The demand for organs and other tissues exceeds the supply, and every year thousands of people die for lack of a transplant, including hundreds in Britain.

“We very much hope that once this new law comes into force in spring 2020, we will see similar results to those we have witnessed in Wales, with more people and families agreeing to donation, enabling more lifesaving transplants to take place,” said John Forsythe, a medical director at N.H.S. Blood and Transplant, the arm of Britain’s National Health Service that organizes donations.

The agency says that more than 80 percent of Britons support organ donation. When asked, grieving families usually approve of donation, but organs are often lost to delays in obtaining consent.

Spain was one of the first countries to adopt presumed consent, in 1979, and it has one of the highest donation rates in the world — more than double that of Britain. But some experts have argued that presumed consent alone is not enough.

Since 1989, Spain has placed transplant coordinators in most hospitals, even small ones, in an attempt to identify potential donors. Their presence has increased donation rates more than the opt-out law alone, an article in The British Medical Journal said in 2010.

According to Dr. José Ramon Nuñez, who leads the transplant program at the World Health Organization, the most important factor to help increase organ donations is gaining people’s trust.

“We have to try and transmit to families that they can be a donor and they can also be a recipient at any time,” Dr. Nuñez said. “And if they see clarity, they see fairness in the way organs are allocated, they can be generous in donating their organs.”

A previous attempt to pass presumed consent legislation in Britain failed in 2008, in part because of opposition from religious leaders. But public support for donation has grown, and only 6 percent of families rejected consent on religious or cultural grounds in the financial year ending in March 2018.

Follow Palko Karasz on Twitter: @karaszpalko.

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