The Right to Bodily Integrity

The right to bodily integrity has become a notable controversial issue within moral, political and legal discourse and this right is regarded as one of the most precious rights that persons have, alongside the right to life. Recent scholarly debate has focused attention on the content, scope and force of this right and has lead to the recognition that a better understanding of the nature of this right will contribute to determining whether and why a multitude of clinical and research activities in medical practice should be seen as permissible or impermissible. The essays selected for this volume examine topics such as pregnancy and reproduction, altering children's bodies, transplantation, controversial modifications and surgeries, and experimentation and dead bodies. This is the first collection of scholarly research articles to provide a comprehensive overview of the ethical and legal aspects of the right to bodily integrity and its implications in theory and practice.

A.M. Viens is a Lecturer in Law and Deputy Director of the Centre for Health Ethics and Law (HEAL), Southampton Law School, University of Southampton, UK. He is also an Associate Research Fellow, Institute for Medical Ethics & History of Medicine, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

Contents: Introduction. Part I Bodies, Rights and Integrity: Bodily and moral integrity rights, Jill Marshall; My body, your body, our bodies, Jonathan Herring and P.L. Chau; Against the right to bodily integrity: of cyborgs and human rights, Gowri Ramachandran. Part II Pregnancy and Reproduction: A defense of abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson; A feminist, Kantian conception of the right to bodily integrity: the cases of abortion and homosexuality, Helga Varden; Sex and the sacred: sterilization and bodily integrity in English and Canadian law, Kristin Savell. Part III Altering Children's Bodies: The child's right to bodily integrity, Robert Ludbrook; Between prophylaxis and child abuse: the ethics of neonatal male circumcision, Michael Benatar and David Benatar; Routine (non-religious) neonatal circumcision and bodily integrity: a transatlantic dialogue, Wim Dekkers; Medicine's challenge to relativism: the case of female genital mutilation, Loretta M. Kopelman; Bodily integrity and the surgical management of intersex, Emily Grabham; Forever small: the strange case of Ashley X, Eva Feder Kittay. Part IV Transplantation: Transplantation and rights over our bodies, T.M. Wilkinson; Confiscating live body parts, Cécile Fabre; Hand transplants and bodily integrity, Jenny Slatman and Guy Widdershoven. Part V Controversial Modifications and Surgeries: Should we prevent non-therapeutic mutilation and extreme body modification?, Thomas Schramme; Body dysmorphic disorder, radical surgery and the limits of consent, Tracey Elliott; Amputees by choice: body integrity identity disorder and the ethics of amputation, Tim Bayne and Neil Levy; Transsexualism and gender reassignment surgery, Heather Draper and Neil Evans; Female genital mutilation and cosmetic surgery: regulating non-therapeutic body modification, Sally Sheldon and Stephen Wilkinson. Part VI Experimentation and Dead Bodies: Proxy research consent and the decisionally impaired: science, the common good, and bodily integrity, Karen J. Maschke; Last rights: the ethics of research on the dead, T.M. Wilkinson; Consent and the use of the bodies of the dead, T.M. Wilkinson. Index.