AMANE SHIMAZAKI/ Staff Writer for Asahi Shimbun
Lawyers acknowledged Jehovah’s Witnesses’ new policy allowing some blood transfusions but called for accountability for deaths, disabilities and other issues caused by the denomination’s anti-transfusion doctrine.
The Christian religious group, headquartered in New York, has rejected transfusions for decades in principle, based on its interpretation of the biblical teaching to “abstain from blood.”
The policy change, announced on Sept. 18, allows followers to receive transfusions of four components at their own discretion: red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma and platelets.
“Advances in medical treatments have raised many questions about the application of Bible principles to various health situations,” said an article posted on the group’s website.
The Japan branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses said the revised policy represents an adjustment based on the Bible, not a reversal.
“The fundamental command to ‘abstain from blood’ remains unchanged,” a representative said. “(The new policy) is intended to respect individual conscience and decision-making.”
A lawyers’ group supporting people affected by issues involving Jehovah’s Witnesses described the revision as “a sweeping, fundamental change to a core doctrine.”
At the same time, the group emphasized that the problems that have been pointed out have not been resolved.
According to the lawyers, followers and family members died or were left with serious disabilities after transfusions were refused, while former believers were cut off from believing relatives because they chose to receive transfusions.
Jehovah’s Witnesses must take responsibility toward those people, they said.
The lawyers’ group conducted a survey in 2023 covering second-generation members raised by Jehovah’s Witness parents and others.
More than 80 percent of the 581 respondents said they had at some point carried either a transfusion refusal card or an identification document stating that their parents did not want them to receive transfusions.
In a statement released on Sept. 21, a group of individuals raised as second-generation Jehovah’s Witnesses, the “JW child abuse damage archive,” called on the denomination to conduct a thorough review of past problems and fulfill accountability to victims.
“No official apology or comprehensive reckoning has been presented for children and young people who suffered harm because they were unable to receive appropriate medical care due to restrictions on component transfusions,” the statement said.
When parents and other guardians prevent a child from receiving transfusions and other medical procedures deemed necessary by a physician, such conduct constitutes neglect or psychological abuse, according to government guidelines released at the end of 2022.
Jehovah’s Witnesses reported having more than 9.2 million followers worldwide.
The group continues to prohibit the use of whole-blood products, which contain all blood components collected from a donor and preserved with additives.
It plans to allow believers to donate blood components to others at their own judgment.
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