Jehovah's Witnesses and Blood Transfusions

Feb. 13, 2012 - PRLog -- Since 2000 the Watchtower Society was forced to change their semantics on how they handle punishing its members for taking blood transfusions to save their lives.The European Court of Human Rights negotiated this change when the country of Bulgaria refused to acknowledge the Watchtower Society as a religion,due to the fact that the Watchtower punished its members for accepting needed medical procedures to save their own,or their children's lives with blood transfusions.

But AJWRB has been tracking the development of these changes, and we have searched for any actual occurrences of a JW (who wants to stay a JW) getting disassociated for taking a blood transfusion.We have not found a one. In the past we have not been able to get Watchtower Service Dept. members to say that they would not disfellowship someone for taking a blood transfusion,this being the case even long after the 2001 semantic change, let alone, getting them to say they won’t disassociate someone for such a sin,and we could never get them to state categorically that they would not disfellowship for taking blood.

But now I have been told personally by Watchtower Service Dept. personnel,that taking a blood transfusion is *not a disfellowshipping offence*.

This is yet another subtle semantic change for those not intimately familiar with Jehovah’s Witnesses,but to the trained, experienced Jehovah’s Witnesses, this is a loud 3 alarm fire. They are literally saying, *taking blood is not a serious enough sin to get one disfellowshipped now.*

Getting disassociated, carries with it exactly the same sentence as getting disfellowshipped.It causes complete social death in an individuals life.All contact with family and friends are severed under the threat of those family and friends also being disfellowshipped or disassociated if they speak to you. Hence, if taking blood is no longer a disfellowshipping offence,then it is no longer a disassociating offence.

www.ajwrb.org/ Jehovah's Witnesses blood policy reform site