What about over and over again? What if the other child needs repeated donations, like in My Sister’s Keeper. What if the second child, the spare-parts child, is expected to have to just keep on giving and giving and giving?
Moreover, when the first child is old enough to realize what’s going on, you should consider her feelings, too. Not all people will be so selfish as to not feel even a little guilty when their perfectly healthy sibling is once again asked to give up time, health, maybe even not allowed to do some fun things because it might endanger her health, in order to save it for the other child.
I am not comfortable with it one bit and when I read My Sister’s Keeper I came down firmly on the other side from the parents. But they were terrible parents, too, and made clear in every way to their other children they were only second best, if that.
Children basically are property under US law.
Only way for a minor to override parental health care decisions is through emancipation.
In some states, a young woman stops being a child if she gives birth.
Other places, and for males, it pretty much takes a court order.
The hospital taking the organs will have a social worker, and of course the staff are human.
So actual abuses are relatively rare- but there are plenty of questionable cases.
I worked in a hospital and saw a related problem, children kept alive who (imho) should have been allowed to die. I understand how hard it must be for a parent to be in that position, but please, if it ever happens to any of you, please make the kind decision. Choose to end the suffering.
Some kids need more than others. My god, look at cases where parents have one neuro-typical child and one developmentally disabled kid. The “normal” kid will make sacrifices, give up fun stuff, have fewer resources every fucking day of their lives, over and over and over again. There’s no preventing it. Does that mean that if the “normal” kid wants their sibling institutionalized so that they can have a semi-normal life, the parents should do it? Look at the toll a bi-polar kid has on their siblings, or a kid who is addicted to heroin, or any number of things.
Cancer is exotic, so it seems different, more serious, but it’s not exotic when you have it. It’s the only normal you have. My husband almost died of lymphoma when he was eight. They told him he was going to die. He had several major abdominal surgeries, a colostomy bag for months, had to get rid of the family dog, major radiation, brutal chemo. This was the 70s, they threw EVERYTHING at cancer. The most interesting thing about it, when he tells the story, is that from his point of view it was nothing, nothing, nothing compared to his parents’ divorcing. Or even having to move from Chicago to Hicksville at 13. But because those kind of things are common, we feel like kids can get through them: they may not be good, but we accept that sometimes life sucks.
My god. Go look at the “roomate-like marriage” thread. No one in this day and age is expected to stay in a loveless but functional marriage to spare kids trauma, but you’re supposed to let one kid die–literally sit by their bedside and hold their hands as they die–rather than put your other kid through medical procedures?
It’s like any other lesser evil: you absolutely do what you can to mitigate the damage and the trauma and you take onto yourself whatever burdens you can to lessen what is on your kids.
Wasn’t My Sister’s Keeper a novel before it was a movie? I’m reposting this link, which goes into* great* detail about minor hematopoietic stem cell donors–for those who are interested in a non-fiction approach to the subject.
Organ donation is a whole different thing. There can be complications from donating bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells, but they are quite rare & much less serious than losing an irreplaceable organ.
Just want to point out that bone marrow donation not only isn’t major surgery, it often isn’t surgery at all any more. Per theMayo Clinic (as reported by CNN):
Yes, it’s still no fun, but it’s very safe and pretty much over when it’s over.
Simple. That applies to adults, who can take care of themselves. Children cannot, and thus necessary delegate some of their freedom to their parents or caregivers.
Parents often have to make children do things that the children would rather not do. That’s just the nature of things.
The question to me is the same as anything else a parent can make a child do: is it a form of abuse, or did the parent have to abuse the child to make them make them comply? If not, then it’s okay.
I’d definitely say making the kid give bone marrow is not abuse. I guess it’s possible to see major surgery as abuse, though, but I’m not sure it qualifies. The action would have be needlessly harmful to the child, and I just don’t see it in most cases. I’d have to see the statistics to be sure, but my instincts are that it is less risky than many other things we make children do.