Using brain-dead women to gestate: the occurrence of the College of Physicians of Colombia

The Colombian Medical Association has had to apologize for the tremendous controversy generated by its last article: in order to “help couples without children” they have suggested getting women in a state of brain death pregnant through in vitro fertilization.

But this is not the only controversial idea: in the state of Massachusetts, United States, they propose to reduce the sentence to prisoners who donate a kidney, part of the liver or bone marrow. An initiative that, however, violates the country’s federal transplant law, which prohibits any consideration or incentive in exchange for an organ. To what extent are these proposals ethical?

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Context. The Colombian College of Physicians spread their idea through social networks.

• In a message on Twitter on January 17, the institution proposed that brain-dead women could be used for surrogacy. According to them, they can carry pregnancies to term.

• Thus, they raise a question: Why shouldn’t pregnancies start to help couples without children? The users of the social network were very critical of the proposal, after which the institution was forced to apologize: “Our spirit will always be the progress of medicine at the service of humanity with the highest bioethical standards.”

Why did it arise? The idea was not his, but that of a Norwegian scientist, Anna Smajdorfrom the University of Oslo (Norway).

• Smajdor conducted a study developing the concept of “whole body gestational donation” for brain dead patients in both women and men.

Read between the lines, the human body as a business. Criticism on social networks was not long in coming.

• Among others, the secretary of the Women of the Mayor’s Office of Medellín, Angelica Ortiz, who declared that no body is being “wasted” today because women are not “a people factory.” She also remarked that this is not resolved by saying that it is being explored with men and that women “are not objects to be used, impregnated and discarded.”

• Jennifer Pedrazaa congresswoman from the Colombian House of Representatives, also said on Twitter that “women are not utensils to be discarded after use.”

• For her part, Blanca Esther Aranda, spokesperson for the Federation of Progressive Women of Spain, maintains that “it is savage, it is the extreme exploitation of the woman’s body, in a body, moreover, totally defenseless, we are talking about women in death brain and that is a real outrage and a tremendous lack of ethics”. In her opinion, the human body should not be the object of business, because women with few resources would be used to do things that they would not otherwise do. Therefore, when using brain-dead women as surrogate mothers, one would have to investigate the circumstances for which those people gave consent.

• And he adds: “The bodies of women are not bought, they are not sold and they are not rented, they are trying to use a subterfuge. An even comparison with organ donation, which in this case would be the donation of the whole body”.

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What about organ donations in Massachusetts? It is another controversial proposal.

• It is a bill raised by the Democrats and that the House of Representatives of the State of Massachusetts is trying to carry out.

• The proposal is that prisoners can opt for a sentence reduction of between 60 and 365 days in exchange for a donation of a kidney, liver section, or bone marrow extraction.

Is it legit? It is, at best, questionable, since in addition to legal issues, this incentive involves ethical criticism.

• The National Organ Transplant Law of 1984 prohibits the exchange of an organ for “valuable consideration”, and what could be more valuable to a prisoner than freedom.

• The same institution has criticized this initiative, saying that it contemplates a dangerous scenario, opening the possibility of organ trafficking.

• This measure may affect the fate of the 6,000 inmates in the prisons of the liberal Bay State, as Massachusetts is known, and by extension the rest of the US prison population.

Is there a history of this? Yes, in 2007.

• South Carolina lawmakers are considering a proposal similar to the one in Massachusetts that would have reduced prison sentences by up to 180 days in exchange for donations. Already at that time, critics debated its legality and the state finally adopted a voluntary organ and tissue donation program that allows incarcerated people to donate without compensation.

• Additionally, the Federal Bureau of Prisons allows prisoners to donate their organs while incarcerated, but only to immediate family members.

• Also in 2013, Utah allowed the release of prisoners who died while behind bars.

• In the case of Massachusetts, the scale of sentence reduction has yet to be established in the event that the law goes ahead: how many days in exchange for which organ or which piece of that other.