NO BUTTIGIEG, NOT EVERYONE’S BLOOD IS THE SAME

by a Blog Reader

Not everyone’s blood is suitable for blood donation. However, a tweet from parliamentary secretary Rebecca Buttigieg, stating that “everyone’s blood is the same,” has muddied the blood donation process with ineligible people showing up to donate blood. They are driven by kindness, willing to donate blood to strangers. But Rebecca Buttigieg’s nonsense statement is a threat to patients’ lives.

As Parliamentary Secretary for Reforms and Equality, Buttigieg incessantly utters the word “equality” as if the abracadabra word will erase inequality. What started the blood donation crack-up was another one of her Pride Week triggers: “Today we announced that the #blooddonation procedure will no longer discriminate on the basis of one’s sexual orientation. Everyone’s blood is the same.”

Discrimination on the basis of one’s sexual orientation is illegal. The current Labour administration is now in its third term. Why did it discriminate against gays’ donations for so long if, as the Equality parliamentary secretary says, “Everyone’s blood is the same”?

If everyone’s blood is the same, why is the Labour government and its Health Department refusing blood donations from 16-year-olds that are fit to be mayors in our largest cities? And why aren’t healthy 66-year-olds eligible to donate? Age discrimination is wrong too.

And why is it that those who have lived in the United Kingdom for six months or more between 1980 and 1996 banned from donating blood? The list of those who aren’t allowed to donate blood in Malta is quite extensive. It includes those who:

(i) weigh 50 kg or less;

(ii) have had a recent tattoo or body piercing;

(iii) have travelled to certain countries over the last year;

(iv) have been pregnant in the last six months;

(v) have had a dental procedure in the last seven days;

(vi) are low in iron;

(vii) use injectable drugs;

(viii) have a cold, flu or COVID-19.

Rebecca Buttigieg is an impressionable junior politician who speaks fiction when she talks about “equality” and sameness. She craves approval from senior men, from ex-Minister Cardona under whose tutelage, “Brava Rebecca” learnt everything there is to know about sex in Maltese law, and the Prime Minister who must have had a fit of wicked mischief when he puffed up her title to “Parliamentary Secretary of Reforms and Equality.”

“Everyone’s blood is the same,” she tweeted. No, it’s not. There are certain eligibility criteria that must be met to donate blood. Rebecca, you’re confusing well-meaning donors and risking patients’ lives. Conversion therapy, which is “frivolous” according to another Buttigieg tweet, is more advantageous to gays than being killed in their mothers’ womb or infusing them with tainted blood. In promoting abortion and equality nonsense about blood, the Parliamentary Secretary is compromising the lives of the innocent. Equality should be about regarding different things differently.