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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/3hcZdsi
lgbtpolitics:
I get that this post is actually about abortion but really i think you should be allowed to take organs from dead bodies and I don’t even get why we can’t. People’s lives could be saved but nah.
kiwianaroha:
I was born with one kidney; I’m OK now but I’ve had kidney issues in the past and I’m at a much greater risk of needing a transplant.
Every single time I’ve asked a “pro-life” person if they would be willing to suffer a little inconvenience to save my life, they have a laundry list of excuses.
Ultimately the discussion reaches the same conclusion each time: “it’s my body and I don’t want to.”
There’s a lower mortality rate associated with live organ donation than pregnancy and childbirth. Unlike an embryo, I am a sentient human being who is able to look them in the eye and plead for my own life.
Nine out of every ten people on the transplant list need a kidney - an organ that a living donor can give with relatively minor long-term limitations. If every “pro-life” person got tested for compatibility, the transplant list would disappear overnight.
notyourunclesam:
Logical inconsistency is a pillar of anti-choice ideology
[image description: a tweet bygalesevmatko that reads “People are dying because it’s illegal to simply take viable organs from dead people. And no one contests this. No pro-lifer is campaigning to force organ and blood donations from living or even dead people. And yet somehow it’s seen as perfectly normal to control women’s bodies.”]
Firstly, the idea that the state could force living or dead people to donate organs, tissue, or blood is kind of horrifying, because that has happened, and it’s Bad. (See the allegations about the Uyghur concentration camps in China.) So, like, apart from the rhetoric, let’s just put that out there: we really don’t want some bureaucratic process forcing this kind of thing because that always goes poorly for the most powerless, to put it mildly. [The fact that the state can apparently force women to bear children is also horrifying! I would not lose sight of that in this argument.]
Anyway, I’m just gonna lean into the hijacking of this post, here, and make a PSA. – In some states it’s opt-out; you’re an organ donor unless you specify otherwise. There are perfectly good reasons not to; among them, your culture has really specific views on the treatment of the body after death. Religious views are so important, of course it’s crucial to respect that. There are personal reasons as well! It’s not the place of the government to force that choice on a deceased person’s relatives. But in opt-out states, by default, they’ll harvest organs from deceased people, and it’s up to the deceased’s healthcare proxy to say no.
In other states, like New York State, it’s opt-in. Opt-in states have much lower enrollment in organ donation programs, just because it takes deliberate effort. New York State has the lowest rate of organ donations in the country, for many reasons, but that’s one of them.
Please, look up organ donation in your state. Find out if it’s opt-in. If it’s opt-in, please do so. And more importantly, most importantly of all, please talk to your family about it. Because in many cases, even when someone is registered as an organ donor, when the time comes, it is always in a time of crisis (by the nature of the thing itself, it is always a horrible time), and the distracted, upset, horribly distraught family says no, and in that case, there’s nothing that can be done. Those organs die with the donor, and that’s it. They get buried. The end. It is not the place of the state to force its way in and say “But lives will be saved” when someone’s loved one is dying. They cannot, must not do that.
So you need to make sure the person who is your health care proxy (also: if you haven’t set that up, please do) KNOWS that you WANT to donate your organs, and knows it well enough that they will remember about it on what will probably be the worst day of their life. Think of it this way– if they know what you want, that’s one less thing they have to worry about and make a decision over. if you’ve ALREADY had that conversation– on a happy day, under no stress, maybe you were having a nice dinner or sitting together on the couch, and you said hey if I die, I want some poor sap to get my liver– they can think of that, in that moment, can think of you happy and whole and healthy and open-hearted making that choice– won’t that be a comfort?
And then you’ll save a life. Several, probably, if everything goes well.
lgbtpolitics:
I get that this post is actually about abortion but really i think you should be allowed to take organs from dead bodies and I don’t even get why we can’t. People’s lives could be saved but nah.
kiwianaroha:
I was born with one kidney; I’m OK now but I’ve had kidney issues in the past and I’m at a much greater risk of needing a transplant.
Every single time I’ve asked a “pro-life” person if they would be willing to suffer a little inconvenience to save my life, they have a laundry list of excuses.
Ultimately the discussion reaches the same conclusion each time: “it’s my body and I don’t want to.”
There’s a lower mortality rate associated with live organ donation than pregnancy and childbirth. Unlike an embryo, I am a sentient human being who is able to look them in the eye and plead for my own life.
Nine out of every ten people on the transplant list need a kidney - an organ that a living donor can give with relatively minor long-term limitations. If every “pro-life” person got tested for compatibility, the transplant list would disappear overnight.
notyourunclesam:
Logical inconsistency is a pillar of anti-choice ideology
[image description: a tweet by
galesevmatko that reads “People are dying because it’s illegal to simply take viable organs from dead people. And no one contests this. No pro-lifer is campaigning to force organ and blood donations from living or even dead people. And yet somehow it’s seen as perfectly normal to control women’s bodies.”]Firstly, the idea that the state could force living or dead people to donate organs, tissue, or blood is kind of horrifying, because that has happened, and it’s Bad. (See the allegations about the Uyghur concentration camps in China.) So, like, apart from the rhetoric, let’s just put that out there: we really don’t want some bureaucratic process forcing this kind of thing because that always goes poorly for the most powerless, to put it mildly. [The fact that the state can apparently force women to bear children is also horrifying! I would not lose sight of that in this argument.]
Anyway, I’m just gonna lean into the hijacking of this post, here, and make a PSA. – In some states it’s opt-out; you’re an organ donor unless you specify otherwise. There are perfectly good reasons not to; among them, your culture has really specific views on the treatment of the body after death. Religious views are so important, of course it’s crucial to respect that. There are personal reasons as well! It’s not the place of the government to force that choice on a deceased person’s relatives. But in opt-out states, by default, they’ll harvest organs from deceased people, and it’s up to the deceased’s healthcare proxy to say no.
In other states, like New York State, it’s opt-in. Opt-in states have much lower enrollment in organ donation programs, just because it takes deliberate effort. New York State has the lowest rate of organ donations in the country, for many reasons, but that’s one of them.
Please, look up organ donation in your state. Find out if it’s opt-in. If it’s opt-in, please do so. And more importantly, most importantly of all, please talk to your family about it. Because in many cases, even when someone is registered as an organ donor, when the time comes, it is always in a time of crisis (by the nature of the thing itself, it is always a horrible time), and the distracted, upset, horribly distraught family says no, and in that case, there’s nothing that can be done. Those organs die with the donor, and that’s it. They get buried. The end. It is not the place of the state to force its way in and say “But lives will be saved” when someone’s loved one is dying. They cannot, must not do that.
So you need to make sure the person who is your health care proxy (also: if you haven’t set that up, please do) KNOWS that you WANT to donate your organs, and knows it well enough that they will remember about it on what will probably be the worst day of their life. Think of it this way– if they know what you want, that’s one less thing they have to worry about and make a decision over. if you’ve ALREADY had that conversation– on a happy day, under no stress, maybe you were having a nice dinner or sitting together on the couch, and you said hey if I die, I want some poor sap to get my liver– they can think of that, in that moment, can think of you happy and whole and healthy and open-hearted making that choice– won’t that be a comfort?
And then you’ll save a life. Several, probably, if everything goes well.
