Our bodies do not belong to the state

There are interesting pieces on the organ donation row by Libby Purves and Polly Toynbee today. Polly seethes that “rightwing commentators are sharpening their pencils for what they see as an excellent ideological dividing line…here we have an important battle of ideas – and the Conservatives have just instinctively plonked themselves on the wrong side.”

What is certainly true is that this issue does test one’s fundamental attitude to the relationship between the individual and the state. Locke’s notion of “self-ownership” is not absolute: we do not accept that you can sell yourself into slavery, or (for that matter) sell your organs while you are alive. But the idea that we should have control over our bodies is deeply entrenched and was, let us not forget, at the heart of the feminist case for the legalisation of abortion. The cultural assumption is that, after death, that control passes to our families.