Not long ago I heard an interview on BBC World News Tonight with a once very wealthy American who had donated his entire fortune to various charities and foundations.
More than that, however, he had donated one of his two good kidneys to whichever recipient the transplant doctors at a Texas hospital determined was the best match.
I wish I could recall his name, but I can’t. There were stories about the unique donation in most U.S. newspapers and on the television news at the time. It was about a year ago, I think.
I don’t remember him saying he was a practicing Christian, but he did say that he based his actions on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who told his followers to give everything they have to the poor and follow him in poverty and service.
The BBC interviewer asked the donor if he believed people with two healthy kidneys who do not donate one to a person with no kidneys is guilty of murder.
Not murder, the man replied, but certainly they are guilty of causing the death of another human being. Perhaps involuntary manslaughter would be more appropriate, he said, but even that went too far. They are, however, directly responsible for the death of another human being and their actions are therefore immoral, or at least amoral, he said.
That got me thinking. Why not require everyone with two good kidneys to donate one to a compatible person with none? Yes, their only remaining kidney may fail later, but a compatible donor would be easily found and they would be right as rain again in no time.
Livers too. Nobody needs all of their liver and a lot of people have livers that no longer function at all. People could be required to donate a part of their liver to save a life.
I can hear the protests rising as I write. To require organ donation is a clear violation of our most basic civil and human rights. Donating an organ is a great and precious gift to another human being and to humanity. Short of dying for your country on the battlefield it is the ultimate sacrifice. But, it should be the individual’s choice.
But, wait a minute. We have conscripted young men to die on the battlefield in the past and still require them to register for the draft should their country need them to die sometime in the future.
Millions of Americans, in Idaho probably a considerable majority of the population, think pregnant women should be required to carry their baby full term regardless of their health or whether the want to have a child or can afford to raise one.
Is not this a violation of these women’s most basic civil and human rights? Shouldn’t they at least have the choice of deciding whether or not their bodies should be used as a manufacturing center for the human race?
It could be that some women don’t like being forced to bear and raise a child any more than the rest of us would like being forced to donate a kidney to keep someone else alive.
To be sure, every fetus is a unique potential human being even when it is no more than a cluster of cells adhered to the wall of a woman’s uterus. But whose unique potential human being? Society’s? The government’s? In the United States neither society nor the government nurture or house it; and they don’t help the mother pay for the doctor and hospital bills necessary to ensure it comes into this world healthy.
Surely a fetus belongs only to the one person responsible for it. How could any of us think that we own a potential child if we take no responsibility for it apart from forcing its mother to have it.
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