Red cross anti gay
Blood Donations
In January , the Biden administration and the U.S. Meal and Drug Administration (FDA) took a significant step toward dismantling antiquated and discriminatory policy preventing queer and bisexual men from donating blood.
The new policy moves away from discriminatory policy based on culture and toward a science-based, individualized risk assessment approach.
Click here to learn more about the progress made in Blood Donation policies and follow HRC’s tries to drive change.
Top Ten Questions on Updated FDA Blood Donation Guidance
The updated guidance abandons the discriminatory deferral policy based on one’s identity within a group (i.e., gay, and bisexual men, and matching gender loving men).
The updated guidance now requires all persons to be evaluated based on an individual donor assessment. All prospective donors will be asked the same questions, and if deemed eligible, can donate blood.
Prospective donors will not be asked if they are monogamous, or in a monogamous relationship.
Under the new guidance, all prospective donors w
Red Cross implements FDA policy allowing more gay and pansexual men to donate blood
More gay and bisexual men will be able to donate blood after the American Red Cross announced Monday it would track recent guidelines from the U.S. Diet and Drug Administration.
The FDA issued guidelines in May stating that all potential blood donors must answer a series of individual, risk-based questions to settle eligibility.
Men who are in monogamous sexual relationships with other men will be able to donate blood.
People regardless of gender or sexual orientation, who contain had multiple sexual partners and own had anal sex in the last three months will be asked to wait three months to donate blood from the last time they had anal sex, according to the Red Cross.
"The Red Cross is committed to achieving an inclusive blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect, and ensures a safe, sufficient blood supply is readily available for patients in need," the organization said in a statement. "This historic change in approach to donor eligibili
In May , the FDA finalized its recommendations to allow blood donations from monogamous gay and bi men, relaxing policy restrictions against them that were widely criticized as discriminatory and that date back to the s AIDS epidemic.
Under the proposed unused guidelines, all prospective donors will be asked about their recent sexual history. If monogamous and no new partners in the last three months, all prospective donors, including gay and bi men, would be considered eligible to donate with no deferral period.
The updated guidelines include:
- A revised donor history questionnaire to request all prospective donors about unused or multiple sexual partners in the past three months.
- Prospective donors who report having a modern sexual partner, or more than one sexual partner in the past three months, are then asked about a history of anal sex in the past three months.
- All prospective donors who report having a new sexual partner or more than one sexual partner and had anal sex in the past three months would be deferred from donation.
- A prospective donor who does not report having new or m
Good Blood, Bad Policy: The Red Cross and Jim Crow
A s Red Cross rule, which racially segregated blood, propped up notions of racial difference and Black inferiority.
In the summer of , months before the U.S. officially entered the global conflict that would occupy it for the next four years, the country’s military was already out for blood. That February, the Army and Navy had connected the American Red Cross to establish the National Blood Donor Service — the first nationwide network of blood banks — with an eye toward supplying life-saving donations to wounded service members.
But when Wanda Douglas, an African American worker at the Social Security Board, went with nine White coworkers to give blood at a Baltimore donation center that July, she was turned away. Unknown to her, and to the general public at the time, the Red Cross had decided not to accept blood from Ebony donors for use in its military program. Officials feared that White servicemen, even with their lives in the balance, would recoil at the prospect of Black blood coursing through their veins. Douglas