hb = "How Can Blood Save Your Life? " - 1990
This may be the earliest use of the well known cliche'
w80 6/15 p. 23 Insight on the News ***
? At a recent conference, two professors of legal medicine from Boston University School of Medicine posed the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses to illustrate one of their points. They asserted that courts have ordered blood transfusions for adult Witnesses only when the patient or family members indicated that the patient would not resist the court order—in effect, leaving the responsibility in the hands of the court. Then the professors cited a case where the patient said that he would resist any court-ordered transfusion. The judge did not issue the order.
Strong resistance where violation of God’s laws may be involved shows that one has taken the apostolic stand: "We must obey God as ruler rather than men." Especially is this true since the Bible links abstinence from blood with such things as abstinence from fornication. Hence, since Christians would resist rape—a defiling sexual assault—so they would resist court-ordered blood transfusions—also a form of assault on the body.—Acts 5:29; 15:20, 29.
Rather than allowing the courts to assume responsibility in this matter, "Jehovah’s Witnesses are not looking for anyone else, whether a doctor, a hospital administrator or a judge, to make these moral decisions for them. They do not want someone else to try to shoulder their responsibility to God, for in reality no other person can do that."—"Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Question of Blood."
