I am a man. However for the purpose of this OP, let us say I am a woman. I am not a lawyer. Let us further say that:
I am pregnant.
I am delivering in a hospital setting.
I am an adult who is over 21, and in full possession of my faculties.
I am inclined to donate both the umbilical cord and complete placenta to the appropriate research agencies so they can make the best use of the very unique cells to be found in both materials.
The questions:
Who owns my body and the parts therein? Do I get to have ownership and control over all of the parts of my body, and the connective tissues between my body and that of my new baby? Would I be allowed to specify that this group of “organ donor technicians” be permitted access to the deliver suite, so that they can abide by my wishes and take the tissue I feel I wish to donate?
Would a hospital be allowed to deny this desire? If I chose to give birth out of a hospital, but in a birthing center that was amenable to the idea, would I be violating any laws by having someone remove “medical waste” on my behalf?
When would I as the pregnant woman lose control over the parts of my body being removed? And, ethically how is this desire to donate the cord and placenta any different than the desire ( which is routinely abided by in the donation of organs to those in need by family memers of someone declared brain dead ) ?
If I was denied permission by the hospital where my OB had priveledges and I moved the “proceedure” to another more donation-friendly facility, could I be seen by the hospital as negligent for taking the delivery of my child away from them ( the percieved “safe” environment" ) and into a birthing center- or perhaps the spare bedroom in my own home??
Is it unethical for me to want to control my body and it’s parts? Is it fair, or right? Is it legal in any given state for me to insist that this be done?
You can easily sign away a lot of rights without realizing it.
The bedsheet form I got for my last procedure was unintelligible to anyone in pain.
Parts of it seemed to say they could do no wrong, and were entitled to experiment with my corpse if anything did.
I don’t know the answer to most of your questions and I don’t know if that varies from state to state or hospital to hospital.
I will never understand how anyone could say that it is unethical, unfair or wrong for you to want to control your body and its parts. When does it become “theirs”?
I suspect the moment said body parts are removed from you. Because of the Fundie battle to own a womans body and to control stem cell research, I am wondering at what point the umbilicus and placenta stop being a part of Mom and Mom’s legal ownership of her own body.
When they are removed? And as I said in my OP, what if Mom has plans for that placenta and umbilical cord that don’t jive with the moral code of the hospital where she is lying incapacitated at the moment?
I thought I had been keeping fairly current on the stem cell controversies, but perhaps not. Are there hospitals which object to the use of placental and umbilical material for research?
If your community doesn’t have a cord blood bank, there can be a problem. The stuff needs to be processed while it’s fresh.
If it does, please check to ensure that the delivery hospital works with the bank. The hospital might not take part–perhaps because of a “moral code” or maybe because it just doesn’t want to bother. The participating hospitals tend to be big ones. Contamination might be too much of a problem with home births. (Hey, I know several perfectly good kids who were born at home–the issue is tissue handling.)
Informed consent is a bedrock principle of American medicine, and rightly so. In real life, while you’re gasping with pain in the delivery room or ER, certain legal niceties may be glossed over or even dropped. Your body and its parts are yours to do with as you please, consistent with the law. But you can certainly waive a lot of those rights.
As to cord blood… We tried to arrange to donate the cord blood when our first child was born, in 1996, and the hospital staff looked at us as if we were from Mars. By the time our final child was born, in 2003, the staff seemed to know what we were talking about, but we were told that it would cost US a sack o’ dough to make the donation. WTF? So we didn’t. I still regret it.
What fundamentalists object to cord blood donation? What hospitals refuse to do cord blood donation for “moral reasons”? They often don’t do it because they aren’t equipped for it, and there’s no one who can accept the donation.
I’m not. I asked a serious of very non-ranty questions because of the current moral tone in a lot of areas of the United States- and I was also curious as to how such things were handled.
I thank those posters who have given hard info as to how donations can be made. Sorry if it came off as a rant- the OP was supposed to be worded efficiently, so I made myself a woman for the f’rinstance.
As for the OP questions, in my murky, dim recollections of law school, I remember a case where a guy had some bizarre condition of the spleen, which required it to be removed and also made it valuable research material. IIRC, the decision came down that he didn’t have a right to control his ex-spleen or make money off it, and it was a-OK for the doctors to take it and profit from it. I don’t remember the reasoning, probably because it made absolutely no sense to me.
I also recall an article a few years ago detailing how parts of donated bodies wind up being sold for profits.
As for umbilical cords, cord blood, and placentas, I think you pretty much have a right to do what you want, though convincing the hospital to give you the placenta might take some doing because it’s an unusual request. Thankfully, it’s still legal to have your baby anywhere you damn well please, though in some places it’s illegal for medical professionals to attend you outside of authorized facilities.
AFAIK, birthing centers are safer for mother and child, even adjusting for the fact that they handle lower-risk pregnancies.
I asked a serious of very non-ranty questions because of the current moral tone in a lot of areas of the United States- and I was also curious as to how such things were handled.