Sorry this is copy and paste but still I very interesting read IMHO. Taken from JWdivorces.com
Often, civil libertarians, and even occasionally Christian Conservatives, praise the WatchTower Society and Jehovah's Witnesses for what those ignoramuses erroneously characterize as the Cult's decades-long fight to expand religious and other civil rights/liberties in American society. (Erroneous because JWs could care less about expanding rights/liberties for anyone but themselves. JWs look forward to "Armageddon", when Jesus Christ returns to destroy everyone but the JWs.) Despite the self-serving intentions of the WatchTower Cult, BUT-FOR its' many courtroom victories over the decades, other religious minorities such as Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, Pagans, and other heathens would not be able to exercise their "freedom of religion" in America's classrooms, government buildings, and elsewhere. Today, even children and ignorant adults who are not Jehovah's Witnesses frequently refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and/or stand in respect for a performance of the National Anthem.
Over the decades, the WatchTower Cult has shared ideals, goals, and legal precedents with other groups which have common legal causes, interests, and goals. Opening the way for Jehovah's Witnesses to reject blood transfusions opens the way for other life-saving medical procedures to be refused by all others. "Right-to-die" and "assisted suicide" advocates share common legal arguments with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
The continued legal fight for unfettered abortion shares some of the same arguments as does the continuing blood transfusions issues as such relate to "unborn children", or as the WatchTower Cult's Legal Department prefers to label them when arguing such court cases -- "fetuses". Legal precedents have been shared by abortionists and Jehovah's Witnesses, alike. The milestone abortion legalization decision, ROE v. WADE (1973), was not an isolated legal decision that jumped up out of nowhere. No, ROE "stood on the backs" of many predecessors, just as subsequent pro-abortion court decisions have stood on the back of ROE. ROE's predecessors had to slowly chip away at many entrenched ideas found in prior legal precedent. The rights of adult females had to take priority over the rights of their unborn children. Unborn children had to be devalued. Unborn children were not even children, or even babies. They first had to become "fetuses". They had to become "its". [Trivia lovers might be interested to know that "Jane Roe", the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, had been reared in the Jehovah's Witnesses.]
For those pregnant Jehovah's Witnesses whom courts were requiring to accept blood transfusions medically necessary to preserve the health and/or life of their unborn children, it was essential that those unborn children stopped being considered as living, breathing "humans", or "babies", or 'infants", or "children", or "boys" and "girls". Those globs of human tissue instead had to become "fetuses". Then, liberal judges with no souls could more easily determine that a Jehovah's Witness Mother owed that glob of tissue no duty to preserve its life. (That attitude will change quickly if and when a doctor or hospital is at fault for causing the harm. See below.) One can't help but wonder how often attorneys from the WatchTower Cult assisted some of these other groups with their own causes in order to establish precedents which would further the WatchTower Cult's own legal goals.
Note carefully the selected verbiage of this previously distributed "DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE" form once provided to all Jehovah's Witnesses: (Accenting ours.)
(9) [This paragraph applies only to pregnant women.] In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 860 (1992), the Supreme Court confirmed that “viability marks the earliest point at which the State’s interest in fetal life is constitutionally adequate to justify a legislative ban on therapeutic abortions.” Thus, since I have the right to abort my pregnancy before viability I necessarily have the lesser right to refuse blood transfusions before viability. In addition, even if my fetus is viable, the Supreme Court has said that mothers cannot be exposed to increased medical risks for the sake of their fetuses and that the state’s interest in the potential life of the fetus is insufficient to override the mother’s interest in preserving her own health. Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 768-71 (1986); see Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 846 (1992). Also, in the cases of In re A.C., 573 A.2d 1235 (D.C. 1990), and In re Doe, 632 N.E.2d 326 (Ill. App. Ct.), cert. denied, 114 S. Ct. 1198 (1994), refusals of treatment by women with viable fetuses were upheld. Although both of these cases involved Caesarean sections, as a matter of principle and logic they show that it is the pregnant woman who should decide what is to be done to herself and her fetus. Therefore, I demand that my refusal of blood and choice of alternative nonblood management be followed and that my doctors manage my care and the care of my fetus without transfused blood.