What if anti-abortion activists weren’t sexist?

noamnety

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Fri Apr-21-06 12:08 AM
Original message

What if anti-abortion activists weren’t sexist?

Edited on Fri Apr-21-06 12:17 AM by lwfern

The Michigan GOP unanimously approved an anti-abortion position recently, which opposes abortion in cases where the woman was raped, as well as cases where her life would be in danger from pregnancy or childbirth.

The underlying presumptions are that:

1. The government has a compelling interest in mandating the use of our bodies to preserve the life of another.
2. Hardship or inconvenience, to include losing a job because of unapproved time off from work, future lost wages, or failing a semester at school do not release us from this basic responsibility.
3. Health risks, up to and including death, do not release us from this obligation.
4. Our obligation to society to save another life through use of our donor-bodies is not negated by disowning responsibility for creating the situation.
5. The financial burden of doing what’s necessary to sustain that life falls upon the donor-body, even if they do not have an interest in preserving the recipient’s life.

In the spirit of cooperation, I thought I’d suggest some additional legislation to support their platform. Here's what I have so far:

1. All citizens over the age of 16 are required to donate blood as often as eligible, i.e. every 56 days.
a. Citizens will be responsible for the cost of donating blood, as well as for the cost of supplying that blood to the recipient.
b. Those persons who fail to report on the 56th day after their previous donation will be charged with a felony offense.

2. All citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 are required to enter the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry.
a. Citizens will be required to pay a fee ranging from $50 to $100 for tissue matching.
b. Those citizens who are a match will be required to undergo surgery, at a doctor’s convenience, with little or no warning. Surgery will last approximately 45-90 minutes, will be done under general or regional anesthesia, and will entail insertion of a needle from the back of the pelvic bone to extract the marrow.
c. The donor-body (or their insurance) will be responsible for the total cost of this operation (for the donor and the recipient), which runs approximately $250,000.
d. Failure to participate in this important life-saving program is a felony.

3. Citizens are required to provide organ donations when requested by the government. Organs required may include: kidneys, lungs, hearts, pancreas, intestines, and liver.
a. The government recognizes that in some cases these operations may prove life-threatening to the donor (particularly the heart transplant), and sympathizes with this hardship; however a threat to the life of the donor is not an acceptable reason to avoid saving another innocent life.
b. Those citizens who are a match for a recipient will undergo surgery at the surgeons convenience, and should expect a recovery time ranging from weeks to months.
c. The donor-body, or their insurance, will be required to pick up the full medical cost for both the removal of the organ as well as the surgery to transplant it into the recipient. Costs may range anywhere from $25,000 to $367,000 depending on region, and type of transplant.
d. Failure to participate in this program is a felony.

4. Cadaver Harvesting
a. All deceased persons will be inspected for possible organ donation. Those candidates found usable will have organs donated. The immediate family will be responsible for the cost of organ removal, as well as the procedure to transplant the organs into the recipients.