No: 11 The Blood Ban | Pocketmags.com

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No: 11 The Blood Ban

I was 16 the first time someone told me I could never donate blood. I was in school, looking at sample donor questionnaires the teacher had given the class. I wasn’t out and hadn’t accepted I was gay, but that didn’t stop another student in class turning around to me and saying I would never be able to donate blood because of one question on the form. “Have you ever had anal or oral sex with another man?”

I first donated blood eight years ago. It was three months after my 18th birthday. I kept donating until my tenth donation on the morning of my 21st birthday, when soon, after an anonymous query was made about me and my sexual orientation, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service immediately moved to ban me. Although the issue was eventually resolved, I started, for the first time, to really look at the policy on blood donations from men who have sex with men (MSM). It was blatantly discriminatory, unscientific and indefensible.

I began writing to the blood service and politicians, but no one would or could do anything to change the situation. I was left with little option but the legal path, where I soon found myself sitting at the back of a room in the Four Courts, waiting to see if the judge would allow my case to go forward. He did.

Within a year of that first court visit, the Minister for Health announced the lifetime ban on MSM donors would be moved to a 12-month restriction. But the policy is still discriminatory, arbitrary and unscientific. There is no sound reasoning behind the current policy, merely blind prejudice and an ignorance of MSM and our relationships, health and lives.

I am more determined now than ever before to fight the ban, by any means available to me, no matter the personal risk or cost, because discrimination and unscientific medical policies should never be given a free pass, no matter how uphill the battle against them might seem. Justice, equality and science must always come first.

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