Tag Archives: blood ban

Caron Lindsay

Blood donation gets more equal and inclusive

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 16th June 2021 - 10:29 am

I was smiling a lot on Monday. On World Blood Donation Day, in the middle of Pride Month, the blood donation rules changed so that they were the same whatever your sexuality.

A decade ago, men who had ever had sex with men were completely banned from giving blood. The rules have been gradually relaxed since then but we now have a more equal system based on a level playing field.

This means that many gay and bisexual men can now give blood, whereas before we lost out on their donations.

This applies over England, Scotland and Wales.

My friend Euan was one of them.

Euan was involved with the then Liberal Youth Scotland’s Freshers campaign to end the blood ban in 2010. The year before, LYS had brought a motion to Scottish Conference calling for an evidence based, scientific approach to this issue.

They kept pushing on this. Euan and his co-President Hannah Bettsworth led a campaign on the issue when they were co-Presidents of LYS a few years later.

It made me really happy that their campaigning over years worked. These things are now decided on the basis of scientific evidence because people campaigned and took up the issue.

The Liberal Democrats have been working to bring this about for 15 years.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 1 Comment
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Mick Taylor
    @DavidRaw. To be strictly accurate, the Church in Wales and the Church in Scotland play no state role since they were disestablished by the 1906-14 Liberal Gove...
  • Jonah Weisz
    Hi Paul, I thought you might be interested to know that we have an ME/LC Lib Dems group where we discuss and coordinate our advocacy efforts - just drop me a li...
  • Judy Abel
    @Geoff thank you for your comments. Unfortunately those experiences sound familiar. Because the NHS is free at the point of use we maybe don’t think we can ex...
  • David Evans
    Mick I'm not at all sure that the Lib Dems sold out in 2010 over student fees. The leadership did, and carried on in that vein whenever it deemed it necessary ...
  • Tristan Ward
    @ David Raw "I’m glad to see you say that the opposition to abolishing slavery was bought off" One interpretation is that majority opinion in 19th cen...