Hot topic · Faith and medicine
Why do Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusions? The verses, the 2026 change, and what the Bible actually forbids
Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusions because they read the command to “abstain from blood” (Acts 15:20, 29), as they quote it, and not to eat blood (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17:10–14) as forbidding any taking of blood into the body, including through a vein. They have taught this since 1945. In 2026 their Governing Body loosened it twice: in March it left the use of a person’s own stored blood to each member’s conscience, and on September 18 it did the same for the four main components of donated blood (red cells, white cells, plasma and platelets). A transfusion of whole donated blood is still refused. The question is back in the news because on November 7, 2026 the BBC reported the death of a young Witness in Texas who refused a transfusion in August, 23 days before the September change. Below: what changed, the verses, what they meant in their own setting, how other Christians read them, and our view, which is that the Bible forbids eating blood, not receiving it to save a life. This page explains a religious question; it is not medical advice.
Why it is in the news
On November 7, 2026 BBC News published the story of a 26-year-old Jehovah’s Witness from Texas who suffered a brain haemorrhage after a seizure in August. According to the report, a neurosurgeon told his family that only an emergency operation needing a blood transfusion could save him; he had carried a “No Blood” card and had confirmed his wishes while conscious, and the family honoured them. He died on August 26. Twenty-three days later the Governing Body announced the change that, in the BBC’s words, would in effect have given him the religious green light for the treatment he refused. His twin brother, who had already left the faith, told the BBC he believes his brother could still be alive had the change come sooner, and asked the leadership for an apology.
The BBC also spoke to the Witnesses’ international spokesperson, Paul Gillies, who described the change as “the application of Bible principles to modern medicine” and said the Bible speaks of “abstaining from blood” but not of the components that can be extracted from it. Asked why it took so long, he said, “it takes time.” He said people who had left over a transfusion are “warmly welcomed” back. The story was picked up by the London Evening Standard and others the same day.
What changed in 2026
The announcement on jw.org, dated September 18, 2026 from Warwick, New York, says that whether to accept red cells, white cells, plasma or platelets from another person’s blood is now “a matter of personal conscience,” and so is whether to donate blood so that components or fractions can be made for others. It adds that “Congregations do not involve themselves in personal decisions that rest with the individual conscience.” The refusal of whole-blood transfusion remains, the announcement says, “a core teaching based on the command to ‘abstain from blood’” (Acts 15:20). Smaller fractions of blood had already been left to conscience for years, and the March 2026 update had done the same for collecting, storing and reinfusing a patient’s own blood. The Associated Press, reporting the September change, described it as a partial easing of a long-standing prohibition.
In practice, as the BBC noted, most modern transfusions use components rather than whole blood, so the change opens most transfusion treatments to Witnesses who choose them. Some, like a Witness from West Sussex who spoke to the BBC, say they would still refuse.
The verses behind the rule
The Witnesses’ own explanation on jw.org calls this “a religious issue rather than a medical one,” cites Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:10 and 17:14, Deuteronomy 12:23 and Acts 15:28–29, and says that “God views blood as representing life.” The first command comes right after the flood, when God gives Noah and his family animals for food:
3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you all things. 4 But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it.Read Genesis 9 in context · Berean Standard Bible →
The Law of Moses repeats it with the reason: “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” and God has given blood on the altar “to make atonement for your souls” (Leviticus 17:11); so “You must not eat the blood of any living thing” (Leviticus 17:14; compare Deuteronomy 12:23). The New Testament text is the letter the apostles and elders sent from Jerusalem to Gentile believers:
28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond these essential requirements: 29 You must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.Read Acts 15 in context · Berean Standard Bible →
The Witness reasoning is that “abstain” covers any way of taking blood into the body, not only the mouth, and that the command applies to Christians today because the apostles restated it for Gentiles.
What the verses meant then
Every one of these passages is about food, apart from the ban on sexual immorality in the apostles’ letter. Genesis 9 is about eating meat; Leviticus 17 and Deuteronomy 12 are about slaughtering animals and eating their flesh; and most interpreters read the Jerusalem letter’s list (food offered to idols, blood, strangled meat, and sexual immorality) as the practices most offensive to the Jewish believers whom Gentiles now shared tables and worship with. James introduced the decision by saying the church “should not cause trouble for the Gentiles who are turning to God” (Acts 15:19), and then explained that “Moses has been proclaimed in every city from ancient times” (Acts 15:21); many read this as saying the rules were chosen because they mattered to the Jewish neighbours the Gentile believers ate with. When Saul’s hungry soldiers “ate meat with the blood still in it,” the sin was eating (1 Samuel 14:32–33).
Leviticus also gives the reason blood was set apart: it was the life, given back to God on the altar for atonement. For Christians that sacrifice is fulfilled in Christ, whose shed blood brings forgiveness (Hebrews 9:22). A transfusion did not exist in the ancient world. It is not eating, and it is not taking life: it is one person’s blood given freely, at little cost to the giver, so that another may live.
What the Bible does not say
The Bible does not mention transfusion, components or fractions, and the Witnesses’ spokesperson made a similar point about components in defending the new rule. Nor does it teach that keeping a food law outweighs saving a life. Jesus faced that very question about the Sabbath, the most sacred ritual law of his day:
4 And He asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” But they were silent.Read Mark 3 in context · Berean Standard Bible →
He reminded the Pharisees that David and his men, when hungry, ate the consecrated bread “which was not lawful for them to eat” (Matthew 12:3–4), and twice quoted Hosea: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 12:7; 9:13). The Law itself says that a person who keeps God’s statutes “will live by them” (Leviticus 18:5); Jewish teachers drew from it the principle that saving a life overrides almost every other commandment (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85b). At the same time, the Bible does take conscience seriously: “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5), and “everything that is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). A believer who refuses blood from sincere conviction is not mocking God, and others should not mock them.
How Christians differ
Jehovah’s Witnesses. Witnesses describe themselves as Christians, though most other churches do not count them as such because they reject the Trinity. Their teaching is that the command to abstain from blood still binds every Christian and includes transfusion; since 2026, whole blood is refused and the main components are a matter of conscience. They stress that they seek “the best possible medical care” and turn to doctors skilled in treatment without blood.
Catholic. The Catholic Church has no rule against transfusion. The Council of Florence, in its decree for union with the Coptic Church (1442), taught that the apostolic ban on blood and strangled meat suited a time when the church was being formed from Jews and Gentiles, and that once that reason ceased, so did the ban.
Orthodox. The Orthodox tradition still treats the apostolic rule against eating blood as binding at table: the Council in Trullo (692), canon 67, forbids eating animal blood. But Orthodox churches do not apply it to medicine. With Patriarch Porfirije’s blessing, the Serbian Orthodox Church has held blood-donation drives in Belgrade churches with the Institute for Blood Transfusion and the Red Cross, and church officials described giving blood as a practical expression of love for one’s neighbour.
Protestant. Protestant churches generally read the Jerusalem decree as guidance for peace between Jewish and Gentile believers in the first century, as John Calvin did in his commentary on Acts, where he calls that commandment “but temporal,” and point to Jesus declaring “all foods” clean (Mark 7:19) and to Paul’s teaching that “food does not bring us closer to God” (1 Corinthians 8:8). These are broad summaries; within every tradition, members differ.
Our take
This is our opinion, not a report. The Bible forbids eating blood, not receiving it to save a life, and the Witnesses’ own new reasoning points the same way.
The September rule rests on a sound principle: do not bind consciences where the Bible is silent. But the Bible is just as silent about whole-blood transfusion as it is about plasma; it never mentions either. If “the Bible does not comment” is enough to leave red cells to conscience, it is enough for whole blood too. The plainest reading of Genesis 9, Leviticus 17 and Acts 15 is that they are about meat on the table, and the plainest reading of Jesus is that mercy and life come before ritual. We think the Witnesses should take the last step and leave all transfusion to conscience, and we think a church that changes a teaching people died for owes those families the plain apology the BBC heard a brother ask for.
That is not a licence for scorn. Witnesses who refused blood did it out of a costly desire to obey God, and many of their neighbours who mock them would not risk so much for anything. The right response from other Christians is to open the verses together, gently, and to make sure that any Witness who now chooses treatment is welcomed, not shamed, by everyone around them. If you face a decision like this yourself, talk it through with your doctors and with people you trust, and know that choosing to live is not a betrayal of God.
Over to you
Have you ever had to choose between a rule you were taught and the life or health of someone you love, and what helped you decide? Tell us below.
Comments
No comments yet. Start the conversation; comments are public and checked for spam. How comments are handled