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The State and the Body: Public Intervention into Bodily Autonomy

The State and the Body: Public Intervention into Bodily Autonomy

Author: Elizabeth Wicks
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781849467797

Published In: December 2016
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Paperback Edition ISBN: 9781509928859

List Price: AU$234.00

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Description
Contents

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This book investigates the limits of the legitimate role of the state in regulating the human body. It questions whether there is a public interest in issues of bodily autonomy, with particular focus on reproductive choices, end of life choices, sexual autonomy, body modifications and selling the body.

The main question addressed in this book is whether such autonomous choices about the human body are, and should be, subject to state regulation. Potential justifications for the state's intervention into these issues through mechanisms such as the criminal law and regulatory schemes are evaluated.

These include preventing harm to others and/or to the individual involved, as well as more abstract concepts such as public morality, the sanctity of human life, and the protection of human dignity.

The State and the Body argues that the state should be particularly wary about encroaching upon exercises of autonomy by embodied selves and concludes that only interventions based upon Mill's harm principle or, in tightly confined circumstances, the dignity of the human species as a whole should suffice to justify public intervention into private choices about the body.

1. Bodily Autonomy

I. Introduction: Why the Body Matters

II. Autonomy: Rights and Relations

III. The Body

IV. Conclusion

2. The Public-Private Distinction

I. Introduction

II. Different Meanings of Public and Private: Contexts, History and Rights

III. Feminist Critique of the Public-Private Distinction

IV. A Descriptive/Normative Spectrum

V. Defining the 'Private'

VI. Defining the 'Public'