RIGHT TO LIFE?
Right to life is one of those modern
questions of good versus good. Sure, I want to save a life, but can I go into
somebody else’s body to do it?
Let’s say you can. That goes beyond forcing a
woman to bare a child for nine months.
About now, and a lot of other times, the local
authorities beg people to donate blood. Why beg? If this is to save lives, it
should be mandatory, at least once a year. As I once said in a letter to Anne
Landers, it’s easy. Just answer a few questions, give a drop to sample, roll up
your sleeve as the technician sticks a needle in your arm, then play couch
potato and lay on a comfy couch and watch a movie or the ball game for an hour.
I should know. At one time in my life, I
didn’t know what else I could give to justify my existence, so I gave enough
blood to become a member of the New York/New Jersey Red Cross Five Gallon Club.
Then there’s the freshly dead. They can offer
so much to the living, just by giving body parts they obviously don’t need
anymore, but under the law today, medical authorities have to beg you to sign a
donor card while you’re alive or beg your newly grieving family afterward and
hope they care more about the living than your dead body.
Again, why should authorities have to ask?
Shouldn’t anybody needing a heart or liver to survive count for more than the
wholeness of your dead body?!?!
Finally, it is possible to donate certain
body parts while living like a kidney or a lobe of your liver. Shouldn’t we
mandate this at least once in your life? Of course, it wouldn’t be easy, but if
we can mandate that a woman bear her child for nine months, we should be able
to mandate that you lie senseless on an operating table for an hour of your
life.
