The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses recently announced a “clarification” allowing individual members to decide whether their own blood may be removed, stored and later returned to the patient’s body during medical treatment.
Previously. Storing your own blood was prohibited. There was nothing unclear or ambiguous about it. It plainly stated that the practice of storing ones own blood for later infusion conflicted with God’s law. Now it is a matter of personal conscience. What has not changed is the core doctrine that Christians must abstain from receiving blood from others. This is because the Bible does not comment on the medical use of one’s own blood.
But this is the same principle previously used to permit organ transplants that come from a donor. But if removal, storing and reusing one’s own blood is now acceptable, then the act of “receiving a blood transfusion” is no longer inherently prohibited. The moral issue becomes whose blood, not what action is prohibited. But Scripture makes no such distinction. The Bible does not comment on the medical use of blood.