FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said the hope is to make donation available to everyone possible in the context of a safe blood supply.
If finalized, the shift would be the latest FDA move to broaden donor eligibility, with the potential to boost the U.S. blood supply.
Gay rights groups have long opposed blanket restrictions on who can give blood, saying they discriminate against the LGBTQ community.
Medical societies including the American Medical Association have also said such exclusions are unnecessary given advances in technology to test blood for infectious diseases.
“Current and former blood donation policies made unfounded assumptions about gay and bisexual men and really entangled individuals’ identity with their likelihood of having HIV,” said Sarah Warbelow of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
The U.S. and many other countries started blocking blood donations from gay and bisexual men during the early 1980s AIDS epidemic, aiming to prevent the spread of HIV through the blood supply.
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