{"id":29071,"date":"2021-02-04T13:43:59","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T19:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=29071"},"modified":"2021-02-04T13:52:02","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T19:52:02","slug":"bill-would-lower-organ-donor-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=29071","title":{"rendered":"Bill would lower organ donor age"},"content":{"rendered":"

The minimum age to choose to be an organ donor on a Nebraska state ID or driver license would be lowered under a bill considered Feb. 4 by the Health and Human Services Committee.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB251, introduced by Omaha Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh, would lower the age from 16 to 14.<\/p>\n

Under current law, a parent of a teenager who chooses organ donation can override that decision after the child\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The bill] does not take away that parent\u2019s right to make those decisions,\u201d Cavanaugh said.<\/p>\n

Marigold Helvey of Omaha testified in support of LB251. Fourteen-year-old Helvey said teenagers who are considered old enough to drive a car also should be considered mature enough to register as an organ donor.<\/p>\n

\u201cLB251 will start important conversations with teens and their families and it will make a difference so that children who need a transplant won\u2019t have to wait as long and they can get a better match,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kyle Herber, president of organ procurement organization Live On Nebraska, also supported the bill. He said there are more than 300 Nebraskans and 100,000 Americans currently awaiting an organ donation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome will wait days, some years, some will never get the opportunity to receive a transplant,\u201d Herber said. \u201cIn the U.S., 20 people die each day because an organ wasn\u2019t available for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one testified against LB251 and the committee took no immediate action on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The minimum age to choose to be an organ donor on a Nebraska state ID or drivers license would be lowered under a bill considered Feb. 4 by the Health and Human Services Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[248],"class_list":["post-29071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-human-services","tag-sen-machaela-cavanaugh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/LB251MCavanaugh2-4-21a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29073,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29071\/revisions\/29073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}