Would you rather spend a year in prison or lose a kidney?
That question could soon be posed to the more than 6,000 prisoners in Massachusetts, if state Democrats can pass legislation that would offer inmates shorter sentences for giving up their organs and bone marrow.
State Reps. Carlos Gonzalez and Judith Garcia are spearheading an ethically dubious bill that would create a donor program within the Department of Correction, which would see convicted felons to give up parts of their bodies for the low-low rate of sixty days to a year off of their sentences.
It’s unclear how much time behind bars the liberal politicians have appraised each organ for.
Presumably bone marrow, which can regenerate within in 4 to 6 weeks would be on low end of the scale.
Livers are donated in lobes, which regenerate, so would a piece of liver be worth at least four months, if the recovery time is six to eight weeks?
Technically lungs are donated in lobes as well, but they don’t grow back.
Cutting one off leads to a 10 to 20 percent loss of lung function and a possible lifetime of recurrent infections and chronic diseases.
Coupled with a brutal six to twelve week recovery time in a population that is made up of 72% current smokers, the politicians pushing this program would at least shave off six months, right?
Kidneys have to be worth the whole year, humans only have two and living donors need to give up the full organ.
“This is being framed as an incentive,” criticized University of Toronto bioethicist Jennifer Bell.
“How do they decide the calculus here? Is it really a fair exchange?”
Prisoners would likely experience a 20 to 30 percent decrease in kidney function, and could be more prone to develop diseases that include high blood pressure and diabetes.
Sixty-two percent of older inmates suffer from hypertension and 23% from diabetes, which along with HIV and Hepatitis-C, are the top chronic health problems that prisoners experience at a “disproportionately” higher rate than the general public.
Kidneys are the most commonly transplanted, but desperately needed organ, which Rep. Gonzalez is well aware of, as he has a friend dying of kidney disease.
“I’ve put more effort into this bill after visiting a friend, who I consider a brother, in the hospital who is required to have dialysis 3 to 4 times a week while he awaits a kidney transplant,” he said in an interview.
“He’s a father of three children, and he’s in his stage 4 of kidney failure. Unless he can obtain a kidney at 40 years old, life expectancy is about 10.4 years for men and 9.1 years for women.”
“I love my friend and I’m praying through this legislation we can extend the chances of life,” he stated.
So when a man that a politician considers a “brother” is in need of a kidney transplant, he co-sponsors a bill that entices prisoners, a population made up of 68% racial minorities and 57% of people in poverty, to sell their organs for freedom.
Gonzales said his program would benefit inmates by restoring “bodily autonomy” by “providing opportunities to donate organs and bone marrow.”
Despite being convicted criminals, prisoners are considered a “vulnerable” population, particularly medically, because their involuntary incarceration “may affect an individual’s ability to give voluntary, informed consent.”
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, correctional healthcare is notoriously “low-quality and difficult to access.”
20% of state and 68% of local inmates have not received medical treatment since the beginning of their incarceration period.
How will Gonzalez’s The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program be able to provide adequate post-op care for inmates facing six to twelve week recoveries, which cause an array of complications and pain?
Long-term incarceration is already known for shortening current and former inmates lives by five years.
Shaving time off a sentence might mean more time on the outside, but losing an organ isn’t going to add to anyone’s lifespan.
The bill is full of ethical quandaries. Would prisoners be able to donate multiple times? Living donors can give up five different organs and their bone marrow.
Presumably inmates would be able to stack time off their sentence for each body part they give up.
Would violent offenders be eligible for early release if they lose a few lobes?
A Washington, D.C., rapist who kidnapped two women at gunpoint with a buddy, repeatedly sexually assaulted the then college freshmen, and forced them to dig their old graves, petitioned for early release under the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act.
Kristen Hubbard, who was eighteen at the time she was viciously raped by Joshua Haggins, doesn’t want him released.
“It’s not fair at all that we have to be here, all these years later, reliving that nightmare because he now says he’s a changed person. I still have to live with the pain he caused me, every day,” she said in an interview.
“I thought I was going to die,” she concluded. “We thought we were going to die.”
The internet is shocked by Gonzalez’s plan to procure prisoner organs.
“The perverse incentives created by this, both increasing demand for mass-incarceration and the undue coercion of inmates, is horrifying,” someone tweeted.
“Prisoners are hardly in an equal bargaining position. Nor should they be induced to turn themselves into a natural resource ripe for the harvest. That should not be a potential consequence of incarceration,” the National Review posted.
“We are at THAT stage of the dystopia, are we? Wow,” one person wrote.
“Body farms! Here we come!” Another added.