A Springtime Surge of Anti-Organ Harvesting Legislation

State legislatures in Georgia and Arizona have unanimously passed bills condemning China’s practice of harvesting organs from unwilling prisoners of conscience. The two bills came one after another in the span of two weeks, showing the great efforts made by human rights advocates in those states.

Georgia’s House Resolution 944 , in addition to calling upon China to immediately end forced organ harvesting, calls for open monitoring of organ tourism to China, and that “no nation should allow its citizens to go to China for transplants until China has allowed a full investigation into organ harvesting of past and present prisoners of conscience.” Furthermore, it encourages the medical community in the State of Georgia to educate its
citizens about the risks of traveling to China for organ transplants so as to prevent them from becoming accomplices in China’s murder-for-profit scheme.

Similarly, Arizona’s AZ HCM2004 exhorts Arizona’s medical community to caution patients about organ transplant practices in China. It calls for the United States to ban entry for any Chinese nationals involved in organ harvesting, and for Arizona’s training hospitals to deny transplant training to any Chinese doctors until China allows investigation into its transplant systems.

Meanwhile the California Republican Assembly (CRA), the longest standing conservative grassroots volunteer organization in California, passed a resolution encouraging the state assembly to act decisively against organ harvesting. In July 2017 California Senator Joel Anderson introduced SJR-10 to condemn China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. However, the resolution was canceled after threats were received from the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.