Arizona joins four other states that have enacted laws to address the Chinese regime’s organ harvesting abuse.
Arizona has signed into law a bill to combat the Chinese communist regime’s practice of forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience, joining four other states that have similar laws in place to counter the abuse.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs
signed the Arizona End Organ Harvesting Act (
HB 2109) into law on May 6, after the state Senate passed the legislation at the end of last month. Under the law, insurance providers, including subscription contracts, health care services organizations, disability insurers, and the state’s Medicaid agency,
can deny or limit coverage for a patient who chooses to receive an organ transplant from China or Hong Kong, or if the organ comes from the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The law will come into effect in the summer, as Arizona law stipulates that signed bills become effective 90 days after the end of the current legislative session.
State Rep. Leo Biasiucci, the bill’s lead sponsor, said he was encouraged to see his state on board to counter forced organ harvesting.
For individuals and their families who have been targeted by the abuse, he hopes the news can bring them some solace, he told The Epoch Times.
A similar bill, also led by Biasiucci, was
vetoed by Hobbs in April last year after passing both state legislative chambers. At the time, the governor rejected it, saying it contained “overboard provisions” that would have prohibited the health care institution and research facilities from using China-based gear for genetic sequencing, and insurers from funding such an act.
Biasiucci separated the 2024 bill into two pieces of legislation—organ harvesting and genetic sequencing–and introduced them earlier this year. Hobbs vetoed the genetic sequencing bill (
HB 2693) on May 2.
Currently, there are two bills in Congress addressing the issue.
On May 7, the House
passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act (HR 1503), which would sanction anyone implicated in the abuse, including revoking visas and blocking U.S. property transactions. Additionally, individuals engaged in the act willfully could face a criminal penalty of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.
The House also
passed the Falun Gong Protection Act (HR 1540) on May 5, which includes provisions to sanction individuals implicated in the forced harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners.
The forced organ harvesting industry saw a boom starting from 2000, as the regime began a full-scale campaign to persecute the spiritual discipline
Falun Gong, which by then had an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners in China.
In 2019, the
China Tribunal in London concluded that the Chinese regime had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years “on a substantial scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the “principal source” of human organs.
Biasiucci said he found it heartening to see Congress moving on the issue. And soon, he said, other states will follow suit.
It was “a long time coming,” he said. “It’s crazy to think this is happening in the year 2025, so I think it took a little bit of time for people to understand this is real.”
But “once people realize exactly what the CCP’s doing, you cannot turn a blind eye,” he added.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, in a
statement issued in July 2023, expressed concerns about how U.S. institutions could unknowingly be aiding China’s abuse.
“Chinese nationals who are physicians and students, coerced or indoctrinated, approved by the Chinese Communist Party to leave the country, have been admitted to U.S. colleges, universities and medical schools and internship/residency programs, where they are taught science, absorb medical knowledge, and learn to perform procedures,” the associated said.
Biasiucci shared concerns about U.S. universities training Chinese doctors who would go back to China and perform organ transplant surgeries, potentially becoming complicit in the abuse.
In a 2022
report, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a U.S.-based human rights group, pointed to hundreds of cases in which Chinese transplant surgeons had honed their expertise in the United States before implementing their skills at major hospitals in China involved in forced organ harvesting.
Biasiucci said that a major reason he decided to sponsor the bill is that he wants to bring awareness to people in Arizona and beyond.
“To think that people are being imprisoned, and their organs are being used for the organ trade in countries like China … I don’t think a lot of people even believe that it’s really happening,” he said.
He hopes the bill can help “get the information out” and shine a light on how bad the situation really is, he said.
“Once you get something like this through, that opens the door to making more change,” he said.
Stopping health insurance coverage will be a first step, he said, adding that he will keep trying to “chip away at more and more parts” and “do everything we can to put an end to this.”
“This is the right thing to do,” he said.
