Prolifers: Should people be required to donate bone marrow to save the life of another person?

Question

There's no question that born humans are people. Should citizens be required to donate bone marrow to save the life of a stranger? Donating bone marrow, while painful and certainly inconvenient, is not going to kill you or maim you in any way. In the interest of preserving human life, shouldn't we legally compel people to donate?

If not, why not?

Answer 1

h**l no. Your body belongs to you. Period.  

Answer 2

Is it to save somebody I like?

Answer 3

Love it!

Answer 4

no...and are you implying that unborn humans are not people?  Typical selfish, self-centered thinking.

Answer 5

But is the DNA the same as the donor or different?

If it is the same then it is not a unique individual person and therefor not the same as a human child inside the womb.

A human child inside the womb is unique in every sense of the word. They have their own DNA and therefor they are a person in of themselves and should be protected by the law.

Answer 6

Yay! :)

Let's not forget mandatory organ donation. I love how so many pro-lifers are utterly against having a woman's right to bodily privacy trump another human life, but they nonetheless think that the right to bodily privacy of the dead should trump human life. (Several thousand people die each year from lack of suitable organ donors, a problem which could likely be remedied by making organ donation mandatory, or at least presumed, policies which are opposed by many pro-life individuals and organizations.)

Then of course there is mandatory blood donation, another thing most people, pro-life or not, would be opposed to, even though it can save lives and is far less intrusive than pregnancy, bone marrow donation, or organ donations.

And if we should be required to donate our bodies to save lives, then surely we should also be required to donate our property to save lives. How many pro-lifers are in favor of much higher taxes for foreign aid and development? None that I know.

And if we want to continue down the list of how pro-life people are terribly inconsistent, we could also mention the fact that somewhere close to half of all natural pregnancies are naturally aborted by the woman's body, a death rate (if you believe that the fertilized eggs are human lives) higher than you find even in war zones or famine stricken countries. Of course you never hear any pro-lifers argue for medical research to help save these lives.

And we could add the apparent inconsistency of believing that one's country is committing a mass-murder on a scale far exceeding the holocaust yet nonetheless supporting that country, obeying the law, and paying taxes which help to perpetuate that mass killing.

Answer 7

Donating bone marrow is not painful.  They administer drugs to you which cause the bone marrow stem cells to collect in your bloodstream, and then filter them out with a machine.  The process is called apherisis.  They've been doing this for many years.  I know because my mother contracted hepatitis this way - doing her Christian duty.

Answer 8

No, we should not legally compel people to donate bone marrow for multiple reasons.

The main reason is that bone marrow donation must be made by a match. The matching process is very exact. If someone receives bone marrow from an unmatched donor, it can cause serious problems for the receiver!

Beyond that, there are several good reasons someone should not donate. They may be ill, themselves, or too young, or pregnant, or too old, or on a medication that prevents them from donating, or any other number of reasons.

Donating bone marrow, like donating blood or a lung or a kidney or anything else, is a choice. It needs to be based on how you feel about the process, as well as the factors named above.

Comparing it to abortion is like comparing apples and oranges. While it's always good to donate if and when you can to help someone else live, it's imperative that we remove the horrible poverty that causes us to decide that innocent unborn children must die so that we may live as we wish, to paraphrase Blessed Mother Theresa.  

Answer 9

No.  No form of government has the right to tell you what to do with your body, beliefs, or thoughts.

Where does it end?  Because one man has two legs, he should donate one to someone else...  I don't think so.

Answer 10

No.  Because bone marrow extraction can cause some serious problems.  There is a risk of infection, which would put the donor at potential risk, therefore, it should never be mandatory.

EDIT: Yes I am prolife, but not at the expense of the mother.  Her physical life trumps the fetus.  Abortion for convenience should be outlawed.

Answer 11

No, a person's body is their body - and you should not compel anyone to do anything of that sort.  It might sound nice, in theory, but would invite all sort of abuse and corruption.  History is too full of too many examples where people used the greater good to justify all sorts of injustices on others (e.g., Tuskegee experiment).  People have a fundamental right to their own person, period.  They have a right to be informed of anything done to them, period.  And they have a right to opt out of any procedure, period.

Answer 12

Yes, I do believe that anyone medically able to do should be required to donate.  However, I am a lil odd.  After having cancer, and needing a bone marrow transplant, my beliefs on a lot of things have been changed.  I feel like donating marrow, or peripheral blood stem cells as it is most of time today does no harm to ther person.  With peripheral blood stem cells the cells are harvest via aphersis, the same process as at the plasma center and even some Red Cross donations.  The biggest risk to the person is a lil inconvience.  With actual marrow, there is the risk of general anesthia or the epidural, so maybe I could give some discretion on that.

But I also believe organs should be donated from anyone that is medically able, that bodies should be used (such as medical cadavers or plastination or research of some type) and then cremated.  I think that burial ground is a waste of land that can no longer be used, and even if it could, who would want to?  So, some would call me an extremist.

Answer 13

F*** that: im getting buried with all my body parts

Answer 14

This is a pretty weak argument to allow people to kill their kids.

Noone forced a woman to have s*x (most prolifers think there are exceptions with rape and most abortions arent about rape)

and I am a bone marrow and you do have to be a very close match

In fact I have been informed twice that I was a possible match, but have never been a perfect match for a person, yet.

imo everyone that can be a bone marrow and blood donor should be but I dont think it should be forced

Pregnancy isnt forced.   You choose to have s*x.  If you are stupid enough to get pregnant then dont take that out on the child.