“All I said was, that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah”
I need to ask a question that has been raised by two related news articles I’ve just read (here and here).
A young woman has died after giving birth to healthy twins when her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness forbade her from having a blood transfusion. There is some speculation that she may still have died even if she’d had it, but no-one is 100% sure. Apparently, because of this verse in the Bible, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that blood transfusions are a sin:
“And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people.” Leviticus 17:10
I’m sorry but I don’t see the connection; a blood transfusion is not “eating” blood. OK, you accept the blood of another into your body and maybe you can stretch the definition and call that eating, but it is a stretch. And let’s remember it is blood that has been freely given, without suffering on the part of the giver, for the greater good of all.
Maybe I could be swayed by the argument if it was just a question of semantics, or if it was just on a par with not eating fish on a Friday, but it’s not. You look at cases like this one and you have to ask: why? Why would you, as a mother-to-be, risk your life for a religious idea rather than hold to the physical certainty of the two children you’ve just given birth to? Why would your family allow you to do this? It’s obvious why the hospital allows it - they’d get sued to pieces if they intervened - but I can’t understand why, or how, the family could just stand by and let it happen. What are they going to tell that little boy and little girl as they grow up and wonder where their Mummy is?
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