Utah Allows Prisoners To Become Organ Donors

Recently, the State of Utah passed law at the end of March this year that would allow prisoners to sign up to become an organ donor. The controversial law would also allow death row inmates to be among those who can sign up to donate. In total, 247 inmates have volunteered to be an organ donor in Utah. As I stated earlier, the decision to allow prisoners to donate their organs was a controversial one. The law is a shift from the norm as most states do not usually allow this type of donation by prisoners. States have allowed it before rarely, however, it is done under strictly controlled circumstances. Never before has a state allowed donations from a death row inmate.

One of the primary issues here was an ethical one. There is a general fear that the government will coerce vulnerable groups of people, such as prisoners, to donate their organs to solve the overwhelming need for organs. There are also public health issues involved here, especially when one considers the prevalence of transferable diseases among inmates in our prisons, the difficulty in actually retrieving the organs promptly, and the manner of death for the inmate. For example, some methods of approved execution would render the organs completely unusable. Of course, these considerations did not stop the Utah state legislature. It was State Rep. Steve Eliason who said, “‘How disappointing is that, there’s somebody who maybe wants to atone for his sins in some way…[i]t’s a waste of perfectly good organs that could help others.'” 

See JoNel Aleccia, New Utah Law Allows Organ Donation From Prisoners, NBC News, Apr. 14, 2013.

Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.