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Women who have sex with men who have had sex with men are also allowed to give blood if they have abstained for three months.
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People are allowed to give blood as long as they haven't gotten a tattoo or piercing within the last three months.
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The FDA narrowed restrictions on other groups as part of its guidance change issued Thursday. But the rules have been relaxed slightly since then, and while the group is working on revising its estimates it told Business Insider it doesn't have them available yet. The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA focused on gender-identity law and sexual orientation, estimated in 2014 that 360,600 more men would likely donate blood each year if the ban were to be lifted completely. "I don't think you are going to get a whole lot of people who are willing to abstain from sexual activity" for the three months, he said, adding that he wasn't aware of specific studies that looked at the impact of reducing the deferral period from a year to three months. In a phone call with reporters, Scott Schoettes, the HIV Project Director for Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ rights group, was skeptical that the change would result in a flood of new donations. The FDA didn't provide estimates about how many more people might donate blood. Stephen Hahn, FDA commissioner, said on Twitter. "We expect that these modified recommendations will help increase the number of blood donations moving forward, while helping to ensure adequate protections for donor health & maintaining a safe blood supply for patients who need it," Dr. The measures were put in place to protect blood recipients from getting HIV. Previously, they were banned from blood donations if they'd had sex with another man within the past year. Under the new rules, men can donate blood as long as they have abstained from sex with another man for three months. The agency made the change following pressure from LGBTQ rights groups and Democratic senators, who celebrated the move but said it still focused too much on people's sexual orientation and gender identity, rather than whether they had engaged in risky behavior. The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it's immediately easing its ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men, citing an " urg ent and immediate need for blood" caused by the coronavirus pandemic.