Anatomical gift act · Maine
In Maine you can refuse to donate by signing a record, in your will, or, during a terminal illness or injury, by telling at least two adults, one of whom has no interest in the decision. If you sign it yourself, you do not need witnesses. Once you have refused and not taken it back, no one else can donate your body or any part of it. 22 M.R.S. § 2947.
If you came here to get off the registry
Taking your name off the organ donor registry is a revocation. So is removing the designation from your driver’s license. Maine law treats a revocation and a refusal as two different things, and only the refusal settles it.
A revocation withdraws the gift you made. It does not stop anyone else from making the gift for you. Only a refusal does that, and Maine requires one to be signed. Until you sign one, the decision is still open to someone else.
Both provisions are quoted in full below, from Maine’s own code.
What Maine asks
Refusal to make anatomical gift and effect of refusal · Preclusive effect of anatomical gift, amendment or revocation
Quoted from Maine’s enacted code, in full and unedited.
How a refusal is made (1)
Refusal of individual. An individual may refuse to make an anatomical gift of the individual's body or part by: A. A record signed by: (1) The individual; or (2) Subject to subsection 2, another individual acting at the direction of the individual if the individual is physically unable to sign; B. The individual's will whether or not the will is admitted to probate or invalidated after the individual's death; or C. Any form of communication made by the individual during the individual's terminal illness or injury addressed to at least 2 other individuals who are at least 18 years of age, one of whom is a disinterested witness.
22 M.R.S. § 2947
Reads “Subject to subsection 2”. That subsection is not reproduced here.
What an unrevoked refusal does (4)
Effect of unrevoked refusal. An individual's unrevoked refusal to make an anatomical gift of the individual's body or a part bars all other persons from making an anatomical gift of the individual's body or the part, except as otherwise provided in section 2948, subsection 7.
22 M.R.S. § 2947
A revocation is not a refusal (2)
Revocation not refusal. A donor's revocation of an anatomical gift of the donor's body or a part under section 2946 is not a refusal and does not bar another person specified in section 2944 or 2949 from making an anatomical gift of the donor's body or a part under section 2945 or 2950.
22 M.R.S. § 2948
What the donor checkbox authorizes
"Transplantation or therapy" is not limited to organs. Under the uniform passing rules, if the part is tissue the gift passes to a tissue bank; if an eye, to an eye bank; if an organ, to an organ procurement organization. Bone, skin and tendon used in surgery are therapy. A donor who wants organs donated but not tissue must say so; the bare designation does not make that distinction.
Maine goes further than most states. A plain “donor” designation here can also be used for research or education, which in forty-one other states it cannot. Maine’s own words:
What a plain donor designation authorizes
If a document of gift specifies only a general intent to make an anatomical gift by words such as "donor," "organ donor" or "body donor" or by a symbol or statement of similar import, the gift passes in accordance with subsection 6 and the decedent's parts must be used for transplantation or therapy, if suitable, and, if not suitable, the gift may be used for research or education.
22 M.R.S. § 2951(5)
You tell us your state, we show you what it asks for before you sign, and your page names the state you signed in. Your signed document is what carries legal weight. We host it and make it findable.