{"id":4027,"date":"2016-12-17T23:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-12-18T05:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=4027"},"modified":"2016-12-17T23:00:49","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T05:00:49","slug":"brief-defense-bodily-autonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/12\/17\/brief-defense-bodily-autonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief Defense of Bodily Autonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Notable thinker and influential Secular Humanist Ron Lindsay recently published an essay<\/a> which was not quite an apologia in defense of routine neonatal circumcision, though he seems to have toed up to the\u00a0line. I would like to look briefly at just a few of his supporting claims and central arguments.<\/p>\n

Danish doctors\u2019 recommendations are in line with most Europeans\u2019 thoughts on this issue.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More saliently, Danish doctors are in line with\u00a0the expert consensus of most other European medical associations<\/a>. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find any<\/em> first-world medical association outside of the United States which has come out in favor of non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision. To the extent that Lindsay\u00a0has conveyed\u00a0the impression of just\u00a0two “dueling medical associations” to\u00a0his audience,\u00a0he has\u2014perhaps inadvertently\u2014misled them.<\/p>\n

For the sake of argument, though, let us proceed on the assumption that the U.S. (the only modern nation which routinely circumcises newborn\u00a0males even in the absence of an explicitly faith-based justification) got it right, whereas the Australians<\/a>, British<\/a>, Canadians<\/a>, Danes<\/a>, etc. all got it wrong. Our working hypothesis\u00a0will be that infant circumcision is “a procedure that\u2019s medically justified, but not [medically] necessary” the vast majority\u00a0of the time.<\/p>\n

Having answered the relevant scientific questions to his own satisfaction, Lindsay goes on to analyze and refute the following moral principle: No permanent changes should be made to a person\u2019s body without their consent.\u00a0<\/em>He correctly notes that the choices parents make invariably effect brain development, which indeed a permanent physical change. Other permanent and non-consensual physical changes come to mind as well, such as the development of antibodies as a result\u00a0of childhood vaccinations and the\u00a0irreversible changes which occur as a result of being denied puberty-blocking<\/a> drugs. All of these choices are routinely made by parents and guardians on behalf of their underage wards, and any\u00a0of them may\u00a0lead to permanent physical changes which grown children will have to deal with throughout their adult lives.<\/p>\n

We rightly value self-determination, but our ability to choose our own path and make our own decisions about our bodies begins after our bodies have already been shaped by our parents in ways we are powerless to change.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is true, so far as it goes, but refuting the “no permanent changes without consent” principle is not particularly progressive or illuminating unless you have a more refined moral principle in mind. Otherwise you run the risk of liberating parents, surgeons, tattoo artists and body modification specialists from any sense of moral restraint. Lindsay recognizes this problem, and suggests the following:<\/p>\n

Parents cannot inflict disabling injuries on their children.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This does not go nearly far enough, in my view. Artistic body modification of all kinds is not disabling, at least not in the usual sense of disability, but surely we would frown upon those who would give their small children neck tattoos and ornamental horns. These are harmless cosmetic changes that may well confer aesthetic value or ingroup identity, however,\u00a0due to their relative permanence and our general preference for\u00a0bodily autonomy, we wait until children have the ability to\u00a0say what\u00a0they would like for themselves.<\/p>\n

A number of other body modifications also fall short of disability, but nevertheless\u00a0violate our moral intuitions regarding bodily autonomy.\u00a0Baldness is not a disability, and there are various ways to permanently remove cephalic hair.\u00a0Cosmetic surgery to enhance one’s appearance is not disabling, indeed, it may make life somewhat easier in the long run. Sterility is not a disability, so far as I can tell; post-menopausal women and infertile men\u00a0are still perfectly capable of moving about in the world in a self-directed and self-actualized way.<\/p>\n

In light of these examples, we need to formulate a general moral principle which strikes a balance between the primacy of bodily autonomy and the unavoidability of natural development over time. I would suggest something like the following: Parents should avoid actively intervening<\/em> to bring about easily avoidable<\/em> permanent changes to the bodies of their minor children which are unlikely to confer a medically necessary<\/em> benefit, unless the children are old enough to understand and consent to the change in question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notable thinker and influential Secular Humanist Ron Lindsay recently published an essay which was not quite an apologia in defense…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}