What limits are there on bodily autonomy?

Somebody posted a "change my view" thing this morning on abortion. This person thought abortion ought to be illegal. The people who responded used bodily autonomy arguments as the primary justification for keeping abortion legal.

That got me to thinking about whether there are any limits on bodily autonomy either legally or morally. It does seem that there are instances when a person's bodily autonomy has to be limited for the sake of some greater good, like public health. For example, your bodily autonomy is limited because you can't sell your kidneys on the black market, you can't take illegal drugs, and you can't be a prostitute. These are all limitations on bodily autonomy.

But they don't violate bodily autonomy in the same way. In the case of selling your kidneys, it isn't so much a limitation on your right to remove something from your body as it is a limitation on your right to sell it. In the case of the prohibition against drugs, you're being denied the right to put something in your body, but in the case of abortion, you're being forced to keep something inside of your body. They both involve your body, but in different ways.

That made me wonder how people would feel about a law mandating vaccines. Considering how strongly people oppose anti-vaxxers (some going so far as to say they should have their children taken away from them), you'd think there's probably a lot of people out there who would be okay with making a law like that. That's kind of analogous to abortion because in both cases, we're talking about your right to refuse something being inside your body.

I found this article on "Bodily Autonomy" this morning that talked about several situations where the right to bodily autonomy came into play. One of those rights was the right to refuse medical treatment. One can refuse medical treatment even if it's necessary to save your life, and you can't be forced to take part in a medical study. With that being the case, it would seem that in the case of abortion, if the unborn is a human being, then abortion is a violation of their bodily autonomy. It's a medical procedure that is done to them that turns out to end their life. So if they are living human beings, then the question of abortion pits one person's bodily autonomy against another's. If you believe in absolute bodily autonomy, how would you adjudicate between them? You'd have a real moral dilemma. But the article also includes the qualification that to have a right of refusal, one must be a competent adult. So I guess that would mean a parent has the right to allow medical procedures for their children even if their children object or are unable to give consent, in which case this rule wouldn't protect the unborn.

On the other hand, consider the case of Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions. Of course religious liberty is the primary reason for granting them the right of refusal, but one could just as well use bodily sovereignty arguments. It is a medical procedure, after all. Do parents have the right to refuse a blood transfusion on behalf of their children? I'm not sure what the laws says about that, but I know there are a lot of people who don't think parents should have the right to refuse blood transfusions on behalf of their children. If neither the parents nor the children in these cases have the right to object to a medical procedure like blood transfusion on the basis of bodily autonomy, then that would be a situation where bodily autonomy could be violated. There are too many disanalogies to make that an argument against abortion, though.

Maybe the unborn could be protected on the basis of public safety. If we are willing to restrict bodily autonomy for the sake of public safety, and if abortion is a matter of public safety (assuming the unborn are members of the human race), then couldn't a mother's bodily autonomy be restricted for the sake of the safety of the unborn? That is the basic pro-life argument. It's just characterized a little differently.

If bodily autonomy were absolute, even if only in the case of abortion, then it would follow that abortion would have to be legal through all nine months of pregnancy, but not even the Supreme Court went that far. In Roe vs. Wade, pregnancy was broken up into three trimesters, and states were allowed to restrict abortion to some degree depending on the level of development in the interest of potential human life or gradually emerging human life. And abortion is restricted to some degree in a lot of states. And a lot of pro-choice people I've talked to are okay with restricting abortion in the later stages of pregnancy. So bodily autonomy isn't absolute even in the case of abortion.

Before I go, here's another article I found this morning where somebody gave several examples of situations where people do not have absolute bodily autonomy: "Why I Do Not Believe In 'Absolute Bodily Autonomy'" by Roger Olson. One of the issues he brought up with the right to bodily harm. The example he used was a situation where you want to cut yourself or starve yourself to death. Does your right to bodily harm mean it should be legal for you to hire somebody to help you cut yourself or starve yourself?

Well, a lot of people approve of doctor assisted suicide and cosmetic surgery, so that may not have been the best example for him to use. But suppose it was. If the unborn is not an individual but is rather a part of the mother (as some pro-choicers think), then to have an abortion is to harm one's own body. It would seem, then, that abortion could be restricted on that basis even though doing so violates the person's bodily autonomy. I doubt anybody would find that argument persuasive since most people think it's okay to remove wisdom teeth and tonsils even when they aren't an immediate threat. Pregnancy, though natural, does carry some health risks with it, so if the unborn are part of the woman in the same way that tonsils or wisdom teeth are, I doubt anybody would have a problem with abortion.

Well, I take that back. There are some people, including the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade, who think potential human life is sufficient to restrict abortion.

And those are my thoughts for this morning.