Greetings!
Don't know if anyone's ever brought this up before:
So I was looking at my copy of the JW DPA (it is from 2001 and the Florida version) and I had never really sat down and read it through before since I never did the DPA thing (and in fact got in a "discussion" about my not doing it with an Elder one time).
Well anyway on page three, paragraph 10 it begins: "This paragraph applies to pregnant women only" The paragraph lays out the legal precedents that establish that "the State may not override a pregnant woman's competent decisions, including refusal of recommended invasive medical procedures, to potentially save the life of a viable fetus" AND THEN goes onto discuss how the "State's interest in the potential life of a fetus is insufficient to override the mother's interest in preserving her own health."
Citations follow including Planned Parenthood v. Casey and then comes the sentence that just blew my mind when I read it. It reads:
"Thus, as a woman has the right to abort her pregnancy before viability, [Stenberg case citation], a woman necessarily has the lesser right to refuse blood transfusions before viability."
WHOA!
Setting aside whether it is a legally solid assertion*, what the Society is saying IS: Since a Woman has a RIGHT to an abortion before viability (and that definitely kills the fetus/child), a woman likewise has the right to reject a blood transfusion that might only potentially result in the death of the fetus/child.)
[*ASIDE: personally I find it somewhat dubious as the cases (and judges) were dealing a different set of interests and factual circumstances and while many may hold a woman's private interest to control their own body (and not being forced to carry an unwanted child to term) sacrosanct and reasonable, many might find it unreasonable for a person to object to a safe and well-established and generally beneficial medical treatment when the objection is based purely upon religious grounds.]
Wow, I mean is it just me or this really a question of strange bedfellows? The Society and Pro-Abortion camps on the same side of an issue?
Look as a lawyer I fully understand that the law is the law and precedent is precedent. If it favours YOUR POSITION, you use it.
But ETHICALLY, I am just a little bit amazed (actually I am not) that the Society out of one side of the mouth can speak against abortion and out of the other side say that it provides a decisional foundation that is CORRECT when it comes to considering a woman's right to choose her medical procedures.
Actually while I think that the Society is dead wrong on blood, I think that it is correct in the fundamental position that patients' should have the right to choose their medical treatment even to the detriment of themselves (and in this case an unborn child).
But clearly the ETHICALLY CONSISTENT position is just that. To say a woman's right to choose an abortion is just that and a woman's right refuse blood is just as sovereign.
Indeed, as an Organization that is supposed to be in essence the moral leader in the world, in my opinion, it would be the correct thing to do (if you did disagree with Abortion) to refuse to cite it as precedent. You would in fact denounce it as bad law and bad precedent, all full of error and immorality. And in fact, in many instances that is what the Society has done in general by denouncing abortion as it has done in its literature and from the platform.
But then to turn around and cite that same precedent as moral and legal authority, all I can do again is shake my head and say "unbelievable."
-Eduardo
PS: Does anyone have a current DPA and is this paragraph still there? I am going to try and attach my scan of the doc here so you can see it for yourself.