Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona pushes to let gay, bisexual men donate blood

PHOENIX – With blood supplies running low in the state and across the nation, U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona is calling on the federal government to lift restrictions on donations from gay and bisexual men.

Men are prohibited from donating blood if it’s been less than three months since they last had sex with another man. And that’s only after the Food and Drug Administration reduced the deferral period from 12 months in 2020.

“No one doubts the serious need for blood donations, yet an entire group of Americans is excluded from answering the call for help,” Stanton, a Democrat, wrote Tuesday in a letter to the leaders of the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. “This cannot be justified with science.

“Due to great medical improvements in HIV detection, an orientation-based exclusion no longer makes scientific sense.”

Thousands of donor drives have been canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the American Red Cross recently declared its first national blood crisis.

“Vitalant, which supplies blood for all the hospitals in Maricopa County and 90% of blood in the state, had historically low blood supplies in January and needs at least 600 donations per day to meet the need in Arizona,” Stanton wrote.

Donation restrictions for gay and bisexual men originated in the 1980s as way to mitigate the transmission of HIV, initially as a lifetime ban. The 12-month deferral policy wasn’t adopted until 2015.

The current policy also applies to other groups, including people who exchange sex for money or drugs and intravenous drug users. It also covers anybody who was tattooed or pierced within the last three months.

Jimmy Thomason, executive director at Aunt Rita’s Foundation, which works to end HIV in Arizona, said it’s outdated and discriminatory to prohibit donations based on sexual preference.

“We currently have the knowledge, and already use the appropriate technology, to test each and every blood donation for HIV — which is not just a gay disease,” he said in a press release from Stanton’s office.

Bridget Sharpe, Arizona director for the Human Rights Campaign, said the restrictions are “based on stigma, not science.”

“Arizona is facing a critical blood shortage — a crisis that can be eased by modernizing the Food and Drug Administration’s discriminatory policy that bans men who have sex with men from donating blood,” she said in the release.

More information about donating blood in Arizona can be found at the Vitalant website.

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