Whose Children? Whose Decision?

IN 1982, Britain’s Medical Protection Society declared: “It is perfectly reasonable to say that you must take the parents’ [religious] beliefs into account. But it is utterly unreasonable to put the child’s life into danger.” This was a firm endorsement for doctors to transfuse blood into the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses without obtaining a court order.

However, the recent upsurge of AIDS has complicated this situation, as the Justice of the Peace reported in March of this year: “The terrible disease AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) introduces a new factor into the argument. If some of the transfused blood has been infected by a donor giving blood, this technically . . . could result in a child acquiring the disease, and dying in a most distressing way a short time later. Already there have been instances where the worst has happened . . . Any terminal disease is appalling from the point of view of parents or others intimately associated with the child, but the effect of AIDS is apparently horrific almost beyond belief.”

A few weeks later, a child under two years of age did die from AIDS in a London hospital. A “tragic victim of a transfusion of infected blood,” reported the Daily Mail. The inquest revealed that more babies in Britain are likely to contract AIDS “in spite of tighter screening of blood used in transfusions.” Already the British blood banks are known to be contaminated. Now will doctors and the courts allow parents to determine medical treatment for their own children and acknowledge their legal right to oppose enforced blood transfusions? Time will tell.