Thursday, the Alabama House Health Committee gave a favorable report to a House bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against the disabled on organ donation lists.
House Bill 58 is sponsored by State Representative Debbie Wood, R-Valley.
“I don’t know how familiar you are with Down Syndrome.” said Wood. “They have an extra chromosome. A mother of a Down Syndrome child told me that they can not be on an organ donation. That broke my heart.”
According to the synopsis, “This bill would prohibit discrimination against an individual from receiving an organ transplant based on the individual having a disability. This bill would also require health care practitioners, hospitals and other health care facilities, and organ transplant centers to provide reasonable accommodations to an individual with a disability in medical need of an anatomical gift or organ transplant.”
State Representative Paul Lee, R-Dothan, is the Chairman of the House Health Committee.
Chairman Lee made a motion to give HB58 a favorable report. The motion passed unanimously.
“They would still have to go through the medical evaluation and if they don’t pass that then they don’t get the organ,” Wood said.
The House Health Committee voted to pass several bills out of committee on Wednesday.
“All of these bills passed (the House) last session without any problem,” Chairman Lee said. “The entire list passed the House without any problem.”
Alabama Citizens Action Program (ALCAP) executive director Joe Godfrey told the Alabama Political Reporter that, “This is a good bill.”
HB58 now moves to the full Alabama House of Representatives for their consideration. The full House could act on this legislation as early as Tuesday, February 11 when the House goes back into session at 2:00 p.m.
Thus far, the Legislature has used two of a possible thirty legislative days in this session.
Wood and her husband own Wood Real Estate.
