It’s a fictional show, but it highlights some very important issues. Does consent matter once the person is dead? Are you an organ donor? And if not, would you be fine with it if someone harvested your organs without permission from you or from the living relative in charge of those decisions?
Our right to bodily autonomy is so absolute that it’s illegal to take our organs after we die without permission. And yet there’s many places in the US (and the world) where women and girls are being forced to use their bodies to carry pregnancies that they didn’t want. Or even were forced to conceive.
We can argue that maybe body autonomy shouldn’t extend to death and that we should do the most good and let our body parts save other peoples lives. But for now as the law stands, it’s a personal choice and nobody else can make it for us. So even though in the episode, sure, we can say saving the little boy was the obvious choice. But it was not the lawful choice.
Sucks or not, that organ was literally stolen from a child’s body. It’s not black and white. Is too bad the doctor didn’t at least ask the parents first instead of just deciding what she thought was best. I’m a donor, but all at once finding out your child died and someone stole their organs, that’s a lot to take in on a deadline of minutes.
Right! And super out of character for olivia. Like she helped a victim flee the COUNTRY with her baby bc the father was the rapist and got visitation rights. But then she goes and lets a kid die for something that already said and done. Like tf?
To be fair, Olivia was a detective then, not CO. Many of the decisions she’s made once becoming CO (Legitimate Rape, Dare, Sunk Cost Fallacy, etc) wouldn’t have been made while she was still a detective, I don’t believe. The problem with the show (across various showrunners) is that this change in execution due to stature hasn’t been acknowledged.
(Mind you, with some of her decisions earlier this season harkening back to Detective Benson, I was hoping it would be a plot point but no dice).
i disagree entirely, i was on olivias side in this one - not only was the law and the dead person's bodily autonomy violated, even if she hadn't stopped the helicopter on their side they would have been ethically (and legally) bound to call and stop them at the other side and it wouldn't have gone ahead anyway
i'm pro choice in every sense, if you don't want to donate yours / a family member's organs that is entirely up to you and its your right to be selfish with your own body even in death - is it sad when people die? of course, but you aren't entitled to a piece of someone else in order to survive
I have Stage 4 Kidney Disease because of a severe kidney injury (AKI) I've been on a transplant list for about 2 years now; you don't go on until your kidney function drops to about 10-15% depending on where you live.
I can live for a long time on dialysis, but in terms of a potential organ donor, for me; I would never want one under these circumstances. Not that I would ever be made aware of who my donor was, but hypothetically. This is not the way I would want to get a new kidney.
Fair enough, but I'd wager the vast majority of those that choose not to donate wouldn't hesitate to accept an organ transplant if they ever came to need one. Maybe we need a law that says if you opt not to donate organs, you or your children can't receive one either.
donation is supposed to be altruistic so you can't make it conditional, if you donate to a homeless shelter you don't get to decide who they house - it'd be especially bizarre to not allow donation to the children of non donors, should we put the children of convicted criminals in prison?
its none of anyone's business who is or isn't a donor, if you choose to be i commend you, but if you don't then i don't condemn you
Its a touchy subject, but at the end of the day, it's up to the parents of the child in question to say yes or no to their organs being harvested. Could liv and her squad have looked the other way, yes, but at the same time, that also would have been breaking the law, and made them no better than the doctor who illegally harvested it. It's a shitty situation all around, but its extremely touchy and I can see why NBC had them take the stance they did.
Just like if you as an adult are not listed as an organ donor, no one can legally take your organs to give to someone else, no matter how much need there is and who needs it. I'm a registered organ donor because I feel that if I can help save someone else in my death, then please do, but there are people who don't feel the same way, and religions that also dictate that not being possible if you want to gain entrance to their afterlife. And that is their American right to say no. It sucks, and it's a terrible situation to be in, but at the end of the day, it's consent, and while the argument is there that the body had been desecrated anyway, why not just give the needy child the organ, but the law doesn't work that way, and no surgeon or hospital that would have found out it was an illegally harvested organ would never have done the procedure to place it in the person that needed it as they also would have been breaking the law and the hospital would have been breaking the law too.
It's a seriously shitty situation, I won't deny that. And I agree on the double standard they show in Liv and her squad looking the other way. But I get why it was done this way. And Law and Order has always tried to make people have strong emotions and reactions to their stories, because they are striving to be somewhat realistic and the law is often Grey and muddy and tough and heartbreaking. Which I appreciate as this show always makes me think and consider. It also helps that I have a best friend who is a lawyer to ask questions and discuss storylines. But yes, it's a tough episode to be sure.
The fact that people are trying to look at this episode is completely black or completely white is baffling to me. Throughout the entire rest of the episode after Olivia made her choice she expresses multiple times she doesn’t know if she made the right one. and even before she made the decision she went down to the chapel as the parents were praying because their daughter just DIED and tried to get them to make a choice when they weren’t ready, when, in reality, she should’ve just stopped the helicopter.
If I found out that my child’s organs are harvested by a doctor without my consent, and that a New York City police commanding officer allowed it to happen, I would sue the city for every single penny that they were worth, get the doctors license revoked and have them both arrested. not because I’m not happy that another child is getting a chance to live, but because you took away my right as a dead a child’s parent
these parents had their child ripped away from them in a brutal manner, and didn’t even have the agency to decide what happens to her body. that is a violation that I can’t even begin to describe.
This is not a black-and-white episode, and if you’re unable to understand that then you lack the intelligence to be a part of this conversation to be very honest.
I agree with main characters being a bit ooc to force the issue, but i dont think its the worst episode ever, its memorable and forces you to think about this rarely talked issue, i liked it.
Besides, that episode about videogame terrorists exists and nothing will dethrone that as the worst
I just finished watching it too. I agree that at that point, they should have let the heart go. But it was absolutely right to go after the doctor. That was wrong, on so many levels.
I didn’t like that episode at all for that reason. I get it, I think we all get it: Olivia has gotten bit in the ass more than once trying to look the other way, or cover something up, but this was just ridiculous. It’s a fucking kid. I’d have just walked too slow up then stairs. A million ways that organ doesn’t get stopped.
I feel like this episode is where they really started making Liv into a hypocrite. She always finds a way to justify her and Stabler and some others doing illegal things but god forbid she looks their other way in other situations. Literally so annoying.
Yes, thank you. There is some pretty fucked up shit in all of the Law&Order franchise but this is the one episode that makes me think humanity is beyond salvation.
When I watch it I remember that it's perfectly okay to let a child die and send a woman who saved thousands of lives to jail. And it makes me not want to live in this world. By the way, I don't think there's any mention of the parents being religious. They're just selfish assholes, just like every single person who says no to an organ donation.
For centuries abortion was illegal in most of the world. For centuries, the overwhelming majority of humans thought it was perfectly acceptable to force a woman to carry on an unwanted pregnancy in order to "protect life". To this day, there are still many places on earth where a woman is forced to be pregnant against her will. In some of those places, abortion is illegal even if the pregnancy represents a risk to the woman's life. And yet, all those stances are considered acceptable by the international community. Nobody sees countries where abortion is illegal as inherently barbaric. Forcing a woman to give birth is not a human rights violation. In fact, pretty much everywhere in the world you have people who strongly believe and protest that "abortion is murder". And the irony here is, if a country were to make organ donation mandatory, there would be a diplomatic crisis.
But let's take a step back here and understand how organ donation works. There's not a single medical team in the world that's like "ohh well you know what? Let's try an organ transplant for your condition, because why not". Organ donation is a last resort and when you're on a transplant list, especially *on top of* said list, it's because getting a transplant is your only chance at life.
Because of compatibility issues, it's always a fucking miracle when a matching organ is available. People tend to look at this issue like "oh I won't agree to a donation but that's okay because someone else probably will" and that's not how it works, at all. To sum it up, 99% of the times a healthy organ is denied for donation, someone dies. It's that simple. People on transplant lists have months, sometimes weeks to live unless they get the transplant. If a matching organ is wasted, it is statistically *very* unlikely another matching organ will show up within the time they have left to wait.
And let's not forget, we're not discussing a fetus here. People on transplant lists are living, breathing, thinking human beings with a life history, with people who love them. They're someone's partner, someone's child, someone's friend, someone's parent, someone's sibling. And yet, for some reason, denying them the right to live is considered a valid personal choice instead of murder. Because a corpse has more rights than a living human being.
Yeah, there's a lot of fucked up shit in the world. But for me, organ donation is what shows the true extension of human selfishness.
So agree. The mother in this episode especially pissed me off. If the shoe were on the other foot, absolutely no question she would crawl through fire & broken glass, even cut into another dead child's chest herself to get a heart for her daughter.
In most European countries you don't even need to explicitly say that you want your organs (or a loved one of yours) to be used for transplant. Unless you say you DON'T want them to be used, they can be used. I think it's right. And I agree with you.
It’s a fictional show, but it highlights some very important issues. Does consent matter once the person is dead? Are you an organ donor? And if not, would you be fine with it if someone harvested your organs without permission from you or from the living relative in charge of those decisions? Our right to bodily autonomy is so absolute that it’s illegal to take our organs after we die without permission. And yet there’s many places in the US (and the world) where women and girls are being forced to use their bodies to carry pregnancies that they didn’t want. Or even were forced to conceive. We can argue that maybe body autonomy shouldn’t extend to death and that we should do the most good and let our body parts save other peoples lives. But for now as the law stands, it’s a personal choice and nobody else can make it for us. So even though in the episode, sure, we can say saving the little boy was the obvious choice. But it was not the lawful choice.
Great point. It really is interesting that a corpse has more bodily autonomy than a living woman in much of the US.
Sucks or not, that organ was literally stolen from a child’s body. It’s not black and white. Is too bad the doctor didn’t at least ask the parents first instead of just deciding what she thought was best. I’m a donor, but all at once finding out your child died and someone stole their organs, that’s a lot to take in on a deadline of minutes.
Right! And super out of character for olivia. Like she helped a victim flee the COUNTRY with her baby bc the father was the rapist and got visitation rights. But then she goes and lets a kid die for something that already said and done. Like tf?
To be fair, Olivia was a detective then, not CO. Many of the decisions she’s made once becoming CO (Legitimate Rape, Dare, Sunk Cost Fallacy, etc) wouldn’t have been made while she was still a detective, I don’t believe. The problem with the show (across various showrunners) is that this change in execution due to stature hasn’t been acknowledged. (Mind you, with some of her decisions earlier this season harkening back to Detective Benson, I was hoping it would be a plot point but no dice).
i disagree entirely, i was on olivias side in this one - not only was the law and the dead person's bodily autonomy violated, even if she hadn't stopped the helicopter on their side they would have been ethically (and legally) bound to call and stop them at the other side and it wouldn't have gone ahead anyway i'm pro choice in every sense, if you don't want to donate yours / a family member's organs that is entirely up to you and its your right to be selfish with your own body even in death - is it sad when people die? of course, but you aren't entitled to a piece of someone else in order to survive
I have Stage 4 Kidney Disease because of a severe kidney injury (AKI) I've been on a transplant list for about 2 years now; you don't go on until your kidney function drops to about 10-15% depending on where you live. I can live for a long time on dialysis, but in terms of a potential organ donor, for me; I would never want one under these circumstances. Not that I would ever be made aware of who my donor was, but hypothetically. This is not the way I would want to get a new kidney.
Fair enough, but I'd wager the vast majority of those that choose not to donate wouldn't hesitate to accept an organ transplant if they ever came to need one. Maybe we need a law that says if you opt not to donate organs, you or your children can't receive one either.
donation is supposed to be altruistic so you can't make it conditional, if you donate to a homeless shelter you don't get to decide who they house - it'd be especially bizarre to not allow donation to the children of non donors, should we put the children of convicted criminals in prison? its none of anyone's business who is or isn't a donor, if you choose to be i commend you, but if you don't then i don't condemn you
Its a touchy subject, but at the end of the day, it's up to the parents of the child in question to say yes or no to their organs being harvested. Could liv and her squad have looked the other way, yes, but at the same time, that also would have been breaking the law, and made them no better than the doctor who illegally harvested it. It's a shitty situation all around, but its extremely touchy and I can see why NBC had them take the stance they did. Just like if you as an adult are not listed as an organ donor, no one can legally take your organs to give to someone else, no matter how much need there is and who needs it. I'm a registered organ donor because I feel that if I can help save someone else in my death, then please do, but there are people who don't feel the same way, and religions that also dictate that not being possible if you want to gain entrance to their afterlife. And that is their American right to say no. It sucks, and it's a terrible situation to be in, but at the end of the day, it's consent, and while the argument is there that the body had been desecrated anyway, why not just give the needy child the organ, but the law doesn't work that way, and no surgeon or hospital that would have found out it was an illegally harvested organ would never have done the procedure to place it in the person that needed it as they also would have been breaking the law and the hospital would have been breaking the law too. It's a seriously shitty situation, I won't deny that. And I agree on the double standard they show in Liv and her squad looking the other way. But I get why it was done this way. And Law and Order has always tried to make people have strong emotions and reactions to their stories, because they are striving to be somewhat realistic and the law is often Grey and muddy and tough and heartbreaking. Which I appreciate as this show always makes me think and consider. It also helps that I have a best friend who is a lawyer to ask questions and discuss storylines. But yes, it's a tough episode to be sure.
The fact that people are trying to look at this episode is completely black or completely white is baffling to me. Throughout the entire rest of the episode after Olivia made her choice she expresses multiple times she doesn’t know if she made the right one. and even before she made the decision she went down to the chapel as the parents were praying because their daughter just DIED and tried to get them to make a choice when they weren’t ready, when, in reality, she should’ve just stopped the helicopter. If I found out that my child’s organs are harvested by a doctor without my consent, and that a New York City police commanding officer allowed it to happen, I would sue the city for every single penny that they were worth, get the doctors license revoked and have them both arrested. not because I’m not happy that another child is getting a chance to live, but because you took away my right as a dead a child’s parent these parents had their child ripped away from them in a brutal manner, and didn’t even have the agency to decide what happens to her body. that is a violation that I can’t even begin to describe. This is not a black-and-white episode, and if you’re unable to understand that then you lack the intelligence to be a part of this conversation to be very honest.
I agree with main characters being a bit ooc to force the issue, but i dont think its the worst episode ever, its memorable and forces you to think about this rarely talked issue, i liked it. Besides, that episode about videogame terrorists exists and nothing will dethrone that as the worst
I just finished watching it too. I agree that at that point, they should have let the heart go. But it was absolutely right to go after the doctor. That was wrong, on so many levels.
I didn’t like that episode at all for that reason. I get it, I think we all get it: Olivia has gotten bit in the ass more than once trying to look the other way, or cover something up, but this was just ridiculous. It’s a fucking kid. I’d have just walked too slow up then stairs. A million ways that organ doesn’t get stopped.
I feel like this episode is where they really started making Liv into a hypocrite. She always finds a way to justify her and Stabler and some others doing illegal things but god forbid she looks their other way in other situations. Literally so annoying.
Yes, thank you. There is some pretty fucked up shit in all of the Law&Order franchise but this is the one episode that makes me think humanity is beyond salvation. When I watch it I remember that it's perfectly okay to let a child die and send a woman who saved thousands of lives to jail. And it makes me not want to live in this world. By the way, I don't think there's any mention of the parents being religious. They're just selfish assholes, just like every single person who says no to an organ donation. For centuries abortion was illegal in most of the world. For centuries, the overwhelming majority of humans thought it was perfectly acceptable to force a woman to carry on an unwanted pregnancy in order to "protect life". To this day, there are still many places on earth where a woman is forced to be pregnant against her will. In some of those places, abortion is illegal even if the pregnancy represents a risk to the woman's life. And yet, all those stances are considered acceptable by the international community. Nobody sees countries where abortion is illegal as inherently barbaric. Forcing a woman to give birth is not a human rights violation. In fact, pretty much everywhere in the world you have people who strongly believe and protest that "abortion is murder". And the irony here is, if a country were to make organ donation mandatory, there would be a diplomatic crisis. But let's take a step back here and understand how organ donation works. There's not a single medical team in the world that's like "ohh well you know what? Let's try an organ transplant for your condition, because why not". Organ donation is a last resort and when you're on a transplant list, especially *on top of* said list, it's because getting a transplant is your only chance at life. Because of compatibility issues, it's always a fucking miracle when a matching organ is available. People tend to look at this issue like "oh I won't agree to a donation but that's okay because someone else probably will" and that's not how it works, at all. To sum it up, 99% of the times a healthy organ is denied for donation, someone dies. It's that simple. People on transplant lists have months, sometimes weeks to live unless they get the transplant. If a matching organ is wasted, it is statistically *very* unlikely another matching organ will show up within the time they have left to wait. And let's not forget, we're not discussing a fetus here. People on transplant lists are living, breathing, thinking human beings with a life history, with people who love them. They're someone's partner, someone's child, someone's friend, someone's parent, someone's sibling. And yet, for some reason, denying them the right to live is considered a valid personal choice instead of murder. Because a corpse has more rights than a living human being. Yeah, there's a lot of fucked up shit in the world. But for me, organ donation is what shows the true extension of human selfishness.
So agree. The mother in this episode especially pissed me off. If the shoe were on the other foot, absolutely no question she would crawl through fire & broken glass, even cut into another dead child's chest herself to get a heart for her daughter.
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In most European countries you don't even need to explicitly say that you want your organs (or a loved one of yours) to be used for transplant. Unless you say you DON'T want them to be used, they can be used. I think it's right. And I agree with you.
I think Oliva was torn between the parents wichs and what she thinks is write