After a lifetime of hearing brief stories and about two weeks of studying about organ donation, I registered to donate my body. I did it just now, before I began to write, and it only took me three minutes.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “an average of 21 people in the United States die each day waiting for transplants that can't take place because of the shortage of donated organs.” How do we as a society allow this to happen, especially if registering as a donor only takes three minutes? It is proven that when an individual is in need of an organ, they often die before receiving it. When the person survives, the longer they wait risks their transplant being rejected by their body. This risks human lives and wastes the available organ.

Right now, the American government is doing nothing to increase the number of available donors. We must continue to educate one another, and educate our society to encourage organ donation. A just society ought to do what is best for it’s citizens, and therefore, the United States must presume consent for organ procurement from the deceased by establishing an opt-out program, which would increase donations and reduce illegal activity.

Presumed consent is a solution to the organ shortage. The opt-out program would presume consent for every citizen unless they state otherwise. Not only would this save countless lives, but when people are educated about organ donation they are more likely to donate than not.

For example, in 2008, Katie’s mother heard the tragic news that her daughter had been hit by a car and did not survive. It wasn’t until that day that she truly learned of what organ donation was. After her mother talked with the doctors, Katie’s organs were donated. Although she did not survive, her organs saved the lives of two grown men and two little boys. An opt-out system would allow more lives to be saved in the event of an accident like this one.

This program would increase the number of donors available. This has been proven in several countries including Spain, the country with the highest donation rates in Europe, which moved to a system of presumed consent and their donation rates have significantly increased since the legislation passed. Austria has had similar success, since the introduction of presumed consent policies the country has a rate of donation twice as high as Europe and the US. This has obviously had a significant impact on organ donation rates all over the world where, according to a study done at Columbia University, “presumed-consent countries have roughly 25 percent to 30 percent higher donation rates than informed-consent countries”. America is a step behind in our system of organ donation, this policy would benefit the United States more than any other.

Further, presumed consent would reduce demand for organs and ultimately discourage black market activity. Dan Bilefsky, a journalist for the New York Times, describes it well when he says, “Organ trafficking is a growth industry. Organized criminal groups are preying upon the vulnerable on both sides of the supply chain: people suffering from chronic poverty, and desperate and wealthy patients who will do anything to survive”. This quote explains that the poor are unfairly taken advantage of and exploited in the current system. The World Health Organization “estimates that only 10 percent of global needs for organ transplantation are being met”.

There is an estimated 7.125 billion people in the world, if suddenly each of us were to need an organ donation to survive, this means that only 700 million of us would survive! In his article, Bilefsky further points out that the growing organ shortage continuously drags dying individuals on the donor wait list into the black market to seek illegal methods of obtaining organs.

Similarly, it forces low income and impoverished individuals to attempt to sell their organs, where they are taken advantage of by criminal organizations and often not paid. This victimization disproportionately affects minorities and the poor while also perpetuating violence. A presumed consent policy that increased organ donation would significantly reduce this kind of activity because increasing the number of organs available legal would reduce the need for people to search elsewhere.

It is incredibly important that our society promotes life and it is the United States’ responsibility to implement an opt-out system to do so. In order to preserve human life and dignity, we must acknowledge that the fundamental interest of a society is the protection and general well being of its people.

When there is a potential policy in which the society can better insure human life with minimal harms then it is obligated to do so. Therefore, our society must presume consent for organ procurement from the deceased. An opt-out program of organ donation would increase the number of donors, while also reducing black market activity. There is more good to come out of organ procurement than to the deceased keeping their organs, and all of society will benefit from an opt-out program.