Cohen's article on India's established human organs market was an enlightening read, and I thought it did well to both examine claims for and against the practice of organ selling.
In her description of the circumstances that would push people into selling their kidneys, Cohen points out how the practice is particularly common among women in the southern regions of the country. The reason for this is twofold: those in the south have better access to certain medical procedures, specifically birth control. Indeed, female donors have usually undergone tubal ligation, since the loss of a kidney would make it too risky to have a child. And somehow, men would be too weakened by the operation in question. As with any case of biological citizenship, kidney selling has multiple meanings for the affected: one must have a particular preexisting status to partake in it (being sterilized prior to surgery), and the scar comes to symbolize the deeper wound of poverty.
The argument in favor of letting the poor sell organs brings up the issue of people's rights to their own bodies, as well as the lack of infrastructure and mentality for developed system of cadaverous donations. Those who would ban organ sales are accused of strawmanning on the basis of a few horror stories about organ-thieving gangs and unscrupulous doctors who deceive patients to steal organs during surgery. Logically, if someone is dying of poverty, they should be free to trade with some non-impoverished person who is dying of organ failure; "life for life" so to speak. Cohen notes, however, that this kind of ethics simplifies the issue to that of a transaction, and does not account for issues such as the fact that the poor soon become indebted again after selling a kidney.
There is also flip-flopping among the pro-organ-selling side: one justification is that most of the poor would die from kidney disease anyway, and doctors were questioned as to why they should perform surgery for poor donors when those suffering from disease need these procedures more urgently. But when asked that they responded that the government should focus its funding on primary care. The emphasis flips between individual patients and the societal level multiple times, to ultimately justify the most profitable way, and Cohen notes that this may also be a source of resistance to cadaver donations.
One particular fact that stood out to me, discussed alongside the topic of birth control surgery, was the male aversion to it; in their case, vasectomies. The perception is that it would "unman" them, and therefore the operation is said to weaken men more than women. But, couldn't the same be said about removing a woman's ability to give birth? Both the ability to fertilize and to carry a child are critical to childbirth and are thus central to male and female identity, respectively, so I'm not sure why the operation is seen to be more detrimental to men. If no more children are planned, it shouldn't matter, regardless.
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