Hispanics Hesitant About Organ Donation

When Norma Garcia’s 13-year-old daughter, Jasmine, was declared brain dead after a car wreck, Norma decided to donate Jasmine’s heart and liver. She didn’t realize that this decision would be so controversial and that it would leave her estranged from her relatives.

Norma’s experience highlights a cultural divide that is threatening the survival of the organ transplant system. Hispanics, particularly first-and second-generation Mexican-Americans, have a lower organ donation rate than Americans as a whole while 45% of patients on the national wait-list are Hispanic. The Hispanic community claims that their religion is against organ donation and that they can’t have an open casket funeral because the body would be damaged. They worry that their loved one won’t make it to heaven because their body is incomplete.

Nuvia Enriquez, the Hispanic outreach coordinator for the Donor Network of Arizona, tries to dissolve these myths by informing Hispanics that the Catholic Church’s position on organ donation is actually very positive.  “Pope John Paul II was actually the first pope to declare donation to be an act of love, and Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal, was a card-carrying organ donor.”  

Jim Forsyth, Many Hispanics Hesitant About Organ Donation, Reuters, Mar. 28, 2011.