AH... a connection.

[novapsyche]

IF the U.S. government has the right/ability to torture, and IF the U.S. government has the right/ability to forcefeed someone on a hunger strike, then it has already established that there are no practical grounds to claim bodily integrity.

Which means that it becomes that much easier to encroach on abortion rights. Because the right to an abortion--that is, the right to privacy--is based on the idea that one has the right to determine what happens to one's own body (or at least that the government has no say in what happens to one's body--it cannot compel one to undergo a surgical procedure one does not want, for example).

When someone claims there is no right to privacy, they are saying there is no right to deny the government access to one's person.

Comments

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

see, this is when phrases like "on pain of death" come to mind. but that's prolly not allowed either.

[dr-pipe.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with what you're saying regarding torture and bodily integrity and encroachment on abortion rights, but I don't agree with your characterization of the right to privacy and the right to abortion as identical. If I am correct in thinking that's what you're saying?

You can have either without the other. If abortion is legal, but there is no privacy, then you just have to have a non-private abortion. If privacy is legal but abortion is not, a secretive abortion is going to be illegal, no matter how private it is, just like drugs, sodomy, and murder are still illegal, even when done in the privacy of one's own home.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I don't know what a non-private abortion is (or would be). Can you elaborate?

[dr-pipe.livejournal.com]

Well, if we lived in a society with no right to privacy, then I assume any and all medical records would be available, in some sense, depending on what we mean by 'no right to privacy.' Perhaps just to the government, meaning that our lack of privacy refers only to the right of the government to invade that privacy at will. Perhaps to any person whatsoever, meaning that the lack of privacy is so extensive that the society could be described as Transparent - any and all information available to any and all people.

In either case, the actual abortion procedure would be no different. The difference would be the availability of information about it.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I wrote a paper in college that addressed this issue, actually. I'm contemplating typing that up in a separate post, but for the moment, I'll just pull info from it.

I drew extensively from Susan Bordo's essay "Are Mothers Persons?: Reproductive Rights and the Politics of Subject-ivity." In that essay, Ms. Bordo quotes a 1891 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which concluded that

No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by a clear and unquestionable authority of law. As well said by Judge Cooley, "The right to one's person may be said to be a right of complete immunity: to be let alone."

(Of course, I don't have the source material in front of me, so I don't have the name of the case cited.)

As I say in my paper, "[In] McFall v. Shimp, [...] a man's bodily integrity was upheld, even though a procedure to which he refused to comply 'could have prevented his cousin's otherwise certain death from aplastic anemia.' One may easily surmise that Bordo chose these two cases as examples in order to illustrate the long-standing legal foundation for the defense of the integrity of a person's own body. This has been upheld even to the extent that one's actions could indirectly cause another's death or even, as in the case Rochin v. California, to regurgitate drugs that authorities have suspected one to have swallowed."

The right to command what is done with what is within one's person is a long-standing right. This goes to the heart of the abortion debate, as far as I am concerned.

[dr-pipe.livejournal.com]

Reading this, I kept expecting you to address what I was talking about, and got to the end without it happening... Not to say that you have to address it, or anything, but yeah, I agree with everything you added here. It has nothing to do with the thing I said I don't agree with, namely, your conflation of rights to privacy with rights to control over one's own person.

Here's something you wrote:

When someone claims there is no right to privacy, they are saying there is no right to deny the government access to one's person.

Now, I'm not a radical anti-privacy type or anything. But there are people who think a Transparent society, that is, a society in which every person has access to all information about everything and everyone, could have benifits. There are many levels to this idea, ranging from simply de-classifying all government information, up to a state of ubiquitous surveilance where anyone can see everything anyone else does. Crime would of course be impossible to conceal in such a situation, and also, taboos would tend to break down when everyone realizes that everyone else does whatever it is too.

Whether these ideas are more good than bad or more bad than good, I simply want to say that the privacy issue is separate from the issue of control over one's person. You can have a Transparent society and still have legal rights to control your own body. In fact, transgression against such rights would be much more difficult, because everybody would see it. The government could not quietly infringe on someone's rights, because everyone would see and there would be a public outrage over it.

[timiathan.livejournal.com]

Sounds good, except abortion is the stick, not the carrot. Very few of the right wingers in Washington want to see abortion actually go -- if it did, how would they turn out the base?

[jdoggiedogg.livejournal.com]

You really should be answering questions on Yahoo Answers. Your insights are brilliant.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

The best argument for a transparent society is that the government and quite a few companies already know most of this stuff, anyway. You'd just be putting regular people on an even playing field.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

The right to command what is done with what is within one's person is a long-standing right.
Yes, but commanding something is going a lot farther than forbidding something.

Also, as long as the government claims the right to force people into military service (even if they're not doing it), and to execute people for crimes, I have a hard time taking seriously the idea that we have any right to bodily integrity.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Good point. I've always been opposed to the death penalty for that reason.

Some sick bastards deserve to be put down, but in a democracy, the government shouldn't have the right to execute it's citizens.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

We're just pawns to the government at this point. The rule of law is a joke when the person most responsible in our society flaunts them like they are mere suggestions.