ooh_child

Hi all,

Since I'm a newbie here, I don't know if this has been addressed before. Here's the story:

A friend needed a kidney/pancreas transplant. His brother was a match, but refused to donate. Should he have been forced, through law, to save his brother's life? If not, then why should a woman be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will?

Even when someone dies, they are not forced to donate their organs, even if it would save someone's life.

If laws are passed to make abortions illegal, then shouldn't laws also be passed to force someone to donate their organs?

MHB

Viti

I donated a kidney to a friend. His brother did not even get tested. I don't think we should mandate living donations, but I do think that donation after death should be assumed unless specified otherwise. We are opposite in the US, you must go out of your way to be a donor...I think it's backwards.

Loren Pechtel

Living donations certainly shouldn't be mandated, period.

I would make donation after death the default, if you don't want it you need to take steps.

Daleth

What LadyShea and Loren said. Also a woman should not be forced to carry a pregnancy to term againt her will.

Dal

Adrammalech

I don't see how you could possibly mandate living organ transplants. There is no such thing as a hundred percent gurantee at life after the surgery and on top of that studies have shown that living organ donors have shortened lifespans. It's like asking them to take a risk at killing themselves earlier than they would theoretically die.

long winded fool

No. In the case of abortion, the organs are already donated. (Maybe not with permission, but they are already being used by another human.) Imagine you wake up to find a lung missing. You later find out it is being used by another person to live. Should you have the legal right to forcibly take your lung back? Even though they did it to you illegally and should face justice, do you have the basic human right to take your lung back? Can you kill a human on the grounds that they are currently using your organs without your permission? (in this society, yes, so long as they fall into a certain category of human, even though the organ usage is only temporary.) Ironic, we can't indiscriminately kill humans who steal our organs, but we can kill humans without any trial who, through no fault of their own, happen to find themselves in a situation where they are temporarily borrowing someone's organs for a relatively short period of time, all things considered.

In your argument, the people forcing the organ donation are analogous to rapists. Rape is already illegal. Making abortion illegal would be analogous to preventing the unwilling organ donor from physically taking his organs back from someone who is already using them to survive.

ooh_child

Well, I agree that no person should be forced to go through a potentially serious medical procedure to save another's life. That includes forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. It's not the fact the her organs are only "borrowed" for a time, it's the fact that a full term pregnancy & birth can pose a serious threat to the woman's health & life. First trimester abortions these days usually don't.

And if saving life, any life, is a priority, then why isn't there a "right to life campaign" to legalize taking organs from folks who have died & not specified their donation wishes?

MHB

Bob Stewart

How about using those who have been convicted of capital crimes as organ donors, whether they agree or not?-- Make them, in some sense "replace" something they have taken, if they are murderers.

Bob Stewart

Bad Kitty

No.

Nor should it be legislated that every person who witnesses a fire must run into the burning building to save an old lady from possibly burning to death.

If some guy becomes trapped on top of Mount Everest, one should not be legally forced to undertake a rescue simply because one is a good mountain climber.

If a man arrives at the emergency room after having just blown his left hand off while playing with firecrackers, it is not incumbent on the surgeon to donate his left hand just because they are about the same size and have the same skin tone.

None of these acts of non-involvement equate to "murdering" another person (murder being the unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice).

Because murder (other than in self-defense) is wrong. And as "wrong" as it seems to force a woman to unwillingly carry a child for nine months, it is "more wrong" to commit murder. For me, it is a matter of avoiding the "greater harm". And yes, I believe that a woman has the right to abort a baby if the pregnancy threatens her life (i.e.; in self-defense).

Of course, this is just my humble opinion and I've no illusions about how its unpopularity among Infidels.

Michelle

Viti

Could you link me to some studies? Everything I read before donating indicated that kidney donors actually live longer than average due to the fact that donors must be so extremely healthy. I underwent a huge battery of tests all designed to eliminate me as a donor.