Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4, Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
I am not unsympathetic to the gravely or terminally ill - especially terminally ill children whose suffering is framed as the suffering of innocents. But in the matter of organ donation once more in the news (“Bill would allow organ harvesting from children with parental OK,” May 16, 2009 I reject post-mortem organ donation on the grounds that, even after death, one’s body is still sovereign. The deceased are not resources to be mined. They still own their bodies. Death is an honorable condition whose members need and, in most cases deserve at least as much protection as the living - and maybe even more protection, since they cannot defend themselves.
“But they don’t need their bodies anymore, and they can’t feel any pain,” people say. But that is beside the point. The point is that my organs are mine entirely and forever, which ought to be reason enough.
“But think of others. You can generously give the gift of life by donating,” people say. But that is beside the point, as well. The point is that my body is mine, even after death, and my decisions about the disposition of it are, rightfully, beyond reproach.
“But what if it was your own child?” they say. But that is also not the point.
If others choose to donate their organs that is all well and good. But if some, like me, stubbornly protect the integrity of our bodies, that is also well and good and is no less of a just decision than the decision to donate. In so far as the donation argument is premised on the notion that Life is sacred and the ultimate good and that any contribution to it is necessarily of great virtue, I would suggest that Conscience, not Life is the ultimate good and that the decision not to donate is also a conscientious one.
I suggest that at least some of the drive to revise organ transplant laws and push for more organ donations betrays a lack of reverence for Life, not the opposite.