Jehovah’s Witnesses make major move on blood transfusions

By Kazeem Ugbodaga

Jehovah’s Witnesses have announced an adjustment to their longstanding position on blood, allowing individual members to decide according to personal conscience whether to accept or donate four main components of blood.

The organisation’s Governing Body announced the change on Friday, September 18, 2026, through an update issued from its World Headquarters in Warwick, New York.

Under the revised position, members can personally decide whether to accept red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma or platelets from another person’s blood during medical or surgical treatment.

The organisation also said each Witness must decide whether to donate blood specifically for the purpose of producing components or fractions for use in treating another person.

However, the adjustment does not remove the organisation’s longstanding position against whole-blood transfusions.

“The long-standing refusal of whole-blood transfusions on religious grounds, a core teaching based on the command to ‘abstain from blood’ (Acts 15:20), is unchanged,” the organisation said.

The change therefore distinguishes between whole blood and its four primary components — red cells, white cells, plasma and platelets.

According to the organisation, decisions involving the four components are now matters of individual conscience. Its medical information page describes the adjustment as extending the principle of personal decision-making, previously applied to blood fractions and a person’s own blood, to the primary components obtained from another person’s blood.

The organisation said the decision followed further consideration of its biblical position on blood.

“Since the Bible does not comment on such decisions, they are a matter of individual conscience. That same reasoning has now been extended to the four main components of blood,” it said.

Paul Gillies, an international spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said the adjustment did not change the organisation’s view that blood is sacred.

“Blood remains sacred to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who continue to regard life and blood as precious gifts from God,” Gillies said, adding that decisions concerning blood components are matters of conscience between individual Witnesses and their God.

The organisation also said local congregations would not intervene in individual decisions involving the four blood components.

“Congregations do not involve themselves in personal decisions that rest with the individual conscience,” Gillies said.

The latest adjustment follows another change announced by the organisation in March 2026 concerning the use of a member’s own blood during medical and surgical care.

In that earlier clarification, the Governing Body said individual Witnesses could decide whether their own blood could be removed, stored and later returned to them during treatment. The organisation retained its position against receiving blood from another person at the time.

The September adjustment extends that individual-decision principle to donated red cells, white cells, plasma and platelets.

The change also represents a departure from the organisation’s previous position on the four primary components. Its earlier published medical guidance stated that Witnesses refused transfusions of whole blood as well as red cells, white cells, platelets and plasma, while allowing individual decisions on certain fractions derived from those components.

The Associated Press reported that the revised position permits members to receive medical treatment involving the four primary components of blood but does not permit whole-blood transfusions. It described the announcement as the second revision to the organisation’s blood policy in 2026.

Jehovah’s Witnesses said the organisation has more than nine million members worldwide across more than 200 countries and territories.