A proposed UK law to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales ran out of time to become law, almost 17 months after Members of Parliament first voted in favor of it.

The bill stalled on April 24 in the unelected upper House of Lords after the House of Commons supported allowing terminally ill adults expected to die within six months to seek medical help to end their life, subject to certain safeguards, the BBC reported.

Pro‑life advocates, including a broad swathe of churches, hailed the failure of the proposed legislation to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales on Friday as a "great victory," the National Catholic Register reported.

That marked "the end — at least for now — of one of the most closely watched moral debates in the U.K. Parliament," according to the Register.

The bill, introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, had initially passed the House of Commons in June 2025 by a vote of 314 to 291.

Observers said the legislation would have been comparable the 1967 Abortion Act, the abolition of capital punishment, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and the introduction of same-sex "marriage," EWTN Catholic News reported.

Hundreds of amendments and a lengthy debate in both houses of parliament, combined with opposition from doctors, pro-life groups and a divided public, scuppered the bill, Evangelical Focus reported.

But supporters of the proposed law said they would not give up and were confident the legislation would return in the next session of the UK Parliament, which will begin on May 13.

The rules of the UK Parliament (that comprises the lower elected House of Commons and the upper appointed House of Lords) required a final vote to be taken within an allotted time, which expired on Friday, April 24.

As a result, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which drew strong debate among MPs in the lower house and peers in Westminster's upper house, expired.

Typically bills brought by backbench lawmakers, called Private Members' Bills, fall unless they are passed by both the Commons and the Lords in one parliamentary session.

Parties that want to legalize assisted suicide or euthanasia will have to start the debate process from the beginning, again, from May, when the new parliamentary session begins.

When the bill failed the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said in a statement: "This is brilliant news." It said the failure of the bill flouted "a media narrative that tried to portray the legislation as 'inevitable'."

"Make no mistake, this outcome is not because of procedural fluke," said the pro-life charitythat has been at the forefront of the opposition. "The (House of) Lords took their job of scrutiny seriously, and the more they scrutinized the bill, the more its flaws were exposed."

Anthony McCarthy, director of the U.K.-based Bios Centre, a pro-life bioethics research center said:. "It is the culmination of an extraordinary effort throughout Britain, uniting those of widely different beliefs, politics and ways of life."