Government: A Thing We Do To Keep Consenting Adults From Selling To Consenting Adults
(And maybe we allow a few people to die in the process!)

Ilya Somin has a piece at Reason -- headline: "Biden Administration Imposes Cruel Border Restriction Barring Mexicans from Crossing to the US to Sell Blood Plasma."

The subhead: "By exacerbating an already severe blood plasma shortage, the new policy will cost lives - and also deprive poor Mexicans of much-needed income."

He quotes Dara Lind and Stefanie Dodt from an article for ProPublica:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on June 15 that effective immediately, it would no longer permit Mexican citizens to cross into the U.S. on temporary visas to sell their blood plasma. A statement provided to ProPublica and ARD said that donating plasma is now considered "labor for hire," which is illegal under the visitor visa most border residents use to cross into the United States to make donations....

Before the pandemic, donors could make up to $40 a donation and over $4,000 a year for those who donated as often as possible. U.S. law caps donations at 104 a year, compared to Europe's recommended frequency of 33 times per year. In Mexico, selling plasma is entirely illegal.

However, with COVID-19 causing a 20% decrease in plasma donations in 2020, according to the industry group the Plasma Protein Therapeutic Association, prices have soared....

"We know a lot of people depend on what they receive from selling plasma to support themselves in Mexico," del Rincon said. "And we know the plasma centers also count on them. And this is going to hurt them."

The U.S. is the biggest global exporter of blood plasma -- a market that reached $21 billion in 2019 -- and plasma centers openly relied on cross-border donations to keep their supplies up....

The B1/B2 visitor visa used most often by Mexican border residents permits some business activity, but it does not permit Mexican citizens to work in the U.S. Before the new announcement, plasma donation fell into a legal gray area, with some CBP agents refusing to let people cross for donations but others allowing it.

Somin explains:

In this case, the main victims are not migrants, but Americans and others who need blood plasma to live.

...Blood plasma is necessary to save the lives of patients suffering from a number of different medical conditions. And, as Lind and and Dodt note, the pandemic has caused a severe shortage of blood plasma, both here and around the world (much of which depends on US supplies, because they ban payments for blood plasma in their own countries). Especially in times of severe shortage, paying donors is essential, because unpaid donations are nowhere near sufficient to meet demand. The new border restriction will predictably exacerbate the shortage, as well as deprive many poor Mexicans of a valuable source of income.

Lind and Dodt point out a paternalistic rationale for the restriction:

[A]s ProPublica and ARD found, frequent plasma donation was also hurting the Mexican citizens who relied on the system for money. Frequent donors were underweight and showed low levels of antibodies.

To my mind, Mexicans (and others) should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to take the health risks involved in becoming frequent plasma donors. For many, the extra money might well be worth it. By mitigating their poverty, it might even enable them to improve their overall health, in the long run.

One can argue that it is unjust for people to be in a situation where their only realistic options are dire poverty or taking a health risk. But, if so, that injustice cannot be alleviated by further reducing the range of alternatives available to the people in question, such that many are left with only the one they consider even worse than the other.

We should not assume that US government officials know what is best for poor Mexicans better than the latter themselves do. Such paternalism is especially worthy of condemnation by those who, like many on the left (as well as most libertarians), support the "my body, my choice" principle.

Somin speculates:

I will say that the argument that paid plasma donation qualifies as "labor for hire" strikes me as highly dubious. It is far more akin to the sale of a commodity. If a Mexican on a B1/B2 visa sells a used car or a basket of fruit while in the United States, that surely doesn't qualify as "labor for hire." The same reasoning applies to selling blood plasma. the fact that the latter comes from the body doesn't strike me as a decisive difference.