Magen David Adom (MDA) is debating changing their blood donation forms so that they read "mother" and "father" in the sections for parent names, instead of the current "parent 1" and "parent 2."
The registration forms had said "mother" and "father" for decades, but were recently changed to accommodate the LGBT movement. In response, many yeshivas called on their students to boycott MDA's blood donation drives until the organization backtracked on its capitulation to the LGBT movement.
The Religious Zionist yeshivas contribute a significant segment of blood donations, since each yeshiva has hundreds of students, many of whom donate on a regular basis. As a result, the boycott call caused MDA to lose thousands of scheduled blood donations.
Now, Israel Hayom reports that MDA has decided to raise the issue with the Health Ministry's advisory committee of experts on intravenous matters, instead of making the decision on their own.
"MDA's blood services are attentive to the general public's feelings on various issues," the organization responded to a query from B'tsalmo. "Therefore the request to change wording of the form has been raised with the experts committee."
"We would like to emphasize that the only thing guiding us is the concern for the supply of blood and blood components, and that it be regular and organized, for both the patients and the injured who require blood infusions in order to save their lives."
B'tsalmo CEO Shai Glick responded: "I praise MDA's position, in which it occupies itself only with blood donations, and with nothing else. MDA is a public organization which does holy work, and it must not involve itself in the public and political discourse. We are sure that the Health Ministry will take MDA's position and the forms will remain as they were in the past."