Hobbs’ Veto of China’s Organ-Harvesting Bill Spurs Questions
The April 10 veto has proponents of the legislation and human rights activists scratching their heads. Over the last year, Texas, Utah, and Idaho have enacted similar legislation, and legislatures in Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina are debating similar measures. The bipartisan bills would prevent health insurance plans from reimbursing individuals for any organ transplants in China or other U.S. adversaries. They also would bar insurance payments for post-operative procedures related to organ transplants if the organ came from China or any other nation that funds or engages in forced organ harvesting.
Idaho’s and Arizona’s versions also included language prohibiting medical reimbursement for DNA and other genetic sequencing procedures conducted on sequencing devices from China and other adversary countries.
For decades, China has harvested prisoners’ organs even though the government initially asserted that all of its organ extractions were from voluntary donors. Yet, as far back as 2005, the top transplant doctor in China, then serving as the nation’s vice minister of health, admitted that roughly 95% of all organ transplants come from prisoners killed for their body parts.
Despite an international outcry over this practice, China ramped up its organ harvesting trade over the last two decades to become a $1 billion-a-year industry, according to international human rights experts. A growing body of research has revealed a particularly reprehensible aspect of the life-ending extractions: Religious minorities and political dissidents are the primary victims, with an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 being killed for their organs each year.
Other research has shown that Chinese authorities have used DNA tests on prisoners in forced labor camps to identify which prisoners would be ideal for organ harvesting.
China has vehemently denied these findings, but in 2019, the China Tribunal, a non-governmental commission in the U.K., concluded otherwise. The Tribunal found that the Chinese organ trafficking industry is harvesting organs from executed prisoners at an industrial scale, actions that constitute crimes against humanity.
Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and co-chair of the annual International Religious Freedom Summit, hailed the passage of the state measures aimed at prohibiting any U.S. complicity in China’s organ-harvesting trade, calling the steps “greatly encouraging.”
“For years, we have known that China is engaged in the despicable and ghoulish practice of forced organ harvesting. We also know that the victims of this crime are most often religious minorities and political dissidents,” she said in a statement. “Sadly, the beneficiaries are usually wealthy patients who may not know the details of this illegal practice. Still, their ignorance does not excuse them from being complicit in this crime against humanity.
“I commend the states that are acting to cut off any healthcare funding for this barbaric practice,” she added. “The demand from wealthy westerners for healthy organs cannot justify, and must never encourage, the brutal harvesting of organs from helpless victims in China and elsewhere.”
In issuing her veto, Katie Hobbs provided a three-line explanation, arguing that the measure “includes overbroad provisions for genetic sequencing equipment that create compliance challenges for hospitals, healthcare providers, and researchers.”
https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2024/05/24/hobbs_veto_of_chinas_organ-harvesting_bill_spurs_questions_150994.html