Bodily Integrity, Body Autonomy and Marriage Equality

In our lives, under whatever flag we live, under whatever religion, whoever our parents are, whatever our ethnicity, color, gender, orientation, age, shape, size, whatever our intellect, ability or education, one fundamental, sacred truth applies to every single individual in the world: We have the sacred freedom and right to our bodily integrity, our bodily autonomy. This means, we each hold as inviolable our individual human body. We each have the right to self-ownership and self-determination over our individual bodies. This is our most fundamental freedom, and no one and nothing has the right to violate, intrude upon or infringe upon that autonomy.

 “The common law right against bodily intrusions has enjoyed a long and venerated history. The inviolability of the body is a critical component of privacy…” (1)

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states everyone “ ..has the right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity…”

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons…” is a recognition of the individual’s right to bodily integrity in the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; it protects the dignity, privacy and bodily security of every citizen against invasive, arbitrary acts by the government or other governmental authority, group, religious body, or person.

Thomas Jefferson said the foundation of a democratic government was that each citizen has equal rights in his or her person, property and in their management.

John Stuart Mill wrote “Over himself, own his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

The right of each man and woman to their own body, to control and make decisions for their own body, is the very cornerstone of all other rights and freedoms.

When Pope John the XXIII stated “[Every man] has the right to life, to bodily integrity…” (2), he did not mean it to imply this right only applied to men. But the problem is that, like so many other political and social values, these words are read in the context of a culture in which women are perceived as less than human, therefore, it can be said- and too often is- that unlike men, women do not have the right to bodily integrity or autonomy, that they are, after all, the property of men, the state, the church and the government.

This is the argument used in the anti-choice movement: that a fetus is a “person” with all rights to personhood, while a woman apparently is not. If the fetus becomes a baby and is born a boy, it becomes a human. But if it is born a girl, she becomes subordinate to the state and to a society’s decisions for her body and has lost a portion of human rights granted her when she was a fetus or a baby in utero. Indeed, a pregnant woman is given fewer rights than any other human, in that, while a person cannot be forced to give a blood transfusion, kidney or other organ to another human being to save that human’s life, the anti-choice groups and politicians claim they have the authority to demand a woman carry her pregnancy to term, whether she chose that pregnancy or not.

The anti-choice movement and its supporters would tell girls and women “Your uterus is separate from yourself; it is an independent thing that we- religious persons, politicians, the anti-abortion movement and your neighbors- claim a right to control over and above your existence; that we demand we have a say over your uterus and its product, even against your own wishes and will, and even if that product be unwanted by you, even forced upon you.” In other words, those who want to control the most intimate, personal decision a girl or woman can make are violating the right of the individual to ownership of her own body.

The power of the state stops at our skins. They can’t restrict contraception [or] abortion. They can’t take our kidneys. Bodily integrity is a principle.”  Gloria Steinem, speaking at Personal PAC’s October 2016 Annual Awards Luncheon

“…I believe unconditionally in the right of people with uteruses to decide what grow inside of their body and feeds on their blood and endangers their life and reroutes their future. There are no “good” abortions and “bad” abortions, there are only pregnant people who want them and pregnant people who don’t, pregnant people who have access and support and pregnant people who face institutional roadblocks and lies…” Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

This is what makes misogynistic, anti-LGBT and anti-choice movements and policies and beliefs, whether political, religious, legal or social, so utterly and appallingly evil – because these policies, beliefs and movements take the position that some humans are not really human, that they are less deserving of human dignity, respect and bodily integrity; that they can be made the property of a religion, a government, a group and be physically, legally, culturally, and physically discarded without a thought, relegated to second or third class status and be oppressed and subordinated to other human beings. These movements and policies are evil because they are designed to intentionally harm another human being, to diminish them, destroy their spirit, reduce them to less than human, undermine their humanness so as to reduce them to a “thing”, allowing those who wish this done to them to hold power over those bodies.

The second most fundamental freedom that relates to bodily integrity and autonomy is the freedom to love and commit to the person we feel an emotional bond with, to create a life together. This means the freedom, between consenting adults, to love, marry, commit to, create a life with the person we recognize as the one we love and feel an emotional bond with. It means that for emancipated children, children who are rescued, children who are escaping abuse, the right to have a life with the person they feel connected to, feel safe with, the person who protects them, loves them as a child, shelters them from the storms of life and then releases them to fly.

I’m going to talk about marriage equality because it connects directly to the freedom to love and commit to another person, to have an intimate connection to another person- again, a fundamental desire found in almost every human being on the planet.

I have heard the argument that allowing LGBT marriages will “destroy the institution of marriage”, but this is only true if your definition of marriage is extremely narrow,   patriarchal and perhaps, even fragile. We’ll look at some of the ways marriage has been, and is, defined or its function perceived, but before that, there are some important words we need to define:

Sacred: connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration
Venerate:  regard with great respect; feel deep respect or admiration for
Santified: set apart as or declare holy; honour as holy; make legitimate or binding by a religious ceremony
Secular: Not connected to religious or spiritual matters
Sacrosanct: regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with
Inviolable:  never to be broken, infringed, or dishonoured

Types of marriage:

1) In some cultures and in the past, the sole purpose of marriage was to create a legal situation wherein a man would take a woman into his home (or move into her home) to produce offspring to inherit the family (his) holdings and properties. Prior to the rise of the political power of the Catholic Church, marriage was seen as a civil contract.

If that is the definition of marriage, then it is simply a property contract in which a female sells herself, or is sold by her father/family, and gives up her bodily autonomy in order to ensure male property rights, secure herself a roof and food and hope the husband or their offspring do not turn her out as she ages and becomes less useful.

2) Some people have married in the past for the special benefits and privileges a state or nation might grant the couple who marry.  In this case, marriage is about establishing a privileged group, a group from whom some people can be banned or barred, from obtaining for whatever reason the state or nation might decide- again, thereby, creating a social contract that supports inequality and discrimination based on arbitrary arguments.

If that is the case, then it is simply a financial contract in which a male and female marry in order to obtain legal benefits otherwise denied them, not a “sacred” ceremony.

3) For those who speak of “protecting traditional marriage”, it should be remembered that traditional marriage has taken many shapes throughout time, including forced marriage, rape as a path to marriage, child marriage, child brides, marriages of political or financial convenience, arranged marriages, marriages in which the lord of the land could claim first-night rights, polyandry, polygamy, and other definitions.

These who define marriage as solely a union between a man and a woman, or between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation (as in historic Roman law) have to accept that this has been a secular or civil institution for far longer than it was a religious or “sacred” institution. The sanctity of marriage was not established until 1563 by the Roman Catholic Church. (3)  And much of this was still dependent on the perception of girls and women as “property”, to be given to a man. Indeed, the concept of love as a foundation of marriage did not become popular until the late 18th century and early 19th century, as Enlightenment thinkers and philosophies considered the right of the individual to their own happiness and fulfillment.

In the US, marriage is not religion- driven, though many marriages take place in a church or other religious building and is acknowledged by the religious community to be a vow before their God. However, these marriages take place after the secular conditions are met: the institution of marriage is a contracted, secular agreement between two people and the state, and is allowed first under civil law (no couple can marry without first having a license issued by the state) and secondarily, if so chosen, under religious doctrines.

Frankly, as I hear more incels, preachers, anti-feminists and certain politicians speak about male entitlement and the “right” to have sex , I wonder if those who promote “traditional marriage”, who proclaim that marriage is about procreation, are actually intent on taking women back to the time they were “property” rather than individuals with their own persons, bodily integrity, and individual freedom to determine their own lives.

For all honest intents and purposes, marriage can truly only be defined as “the legally recognized, sacrosanct union of two people as partners in a personal relationship for the purpose of companionship, sharing love and mutual purpose.” Not just a man and a woman, in which the woman is subsumed into her husband, but “two people” (and considering polyandry and polygamy, even this most basic definition could be challenged). In the best of marriage contracts, we could extend that definition to be “the legally recognized, sacrosanct union of two equal people as partners in a personal relationship for the purpose of companionship, sharing love and mutual purpose.”

And to that, some would add “the legally recognized, sacrosanct, inviolable union of two equal people as partners in a personal relationship for the purpose of companionship, sharing love and mutual purpose.”

And nothing in this description gives another person outside the couple the “right” to deny them such a relationship or union- unless, of course, they are prepared to deny all such relationships to all persons and end marriage altogether.

Because the question should be raised, can a marriage be a marriage if it is not a partnership between equal persons, with full legal, social, financial and civil equality?

Chris Grace, in the 2015 essay on marriage (4) stated the gifts of marriage were companionship, passion and purpose (setting aside the secular benefits dealing with financial and social benefits). In the article we find the words “Being closely connected to and affectionate with another brings contentment and joy, and at times profound happiness and bliss. These pleasurable states of well-being and connectedness are characterized by sense of meaning and belonging to something bigger in life. “These feelings and needs are not found exclusively in heterosexual couples, anymore than the need to love and be loved is- these are human needs, and as such, should be so recognized and made available equally to all.

Civilization, defined as an advanced stage of social and cultural development, comes with a plethora of adjectives. These include enlightened, humane, educated, advanced, cultured, civil; showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; ethical, reasonable… and its opposites reflect what an uncivilized people are like:  uneducated, barbaric, thuggish, cruel… we need to decide, now, what we will carry into the future: a human civilization or a chaos of barbarism and oppression.

And the further tragedy is that, while they are destroying or stealing the away the rights to bodily integrity from girls and women, while they are trying to strip away the right of a person to love and create a home and life journey with the person of his or her choice, they are giving away their own body integrity and freedom to love as well-  because once you establish in culture, law or government that one person has more rights than another, once you set a precedent that one person has the right to control the body and life of another person, you are opening the door to unrestrained evil and domination and once you do that, you are the next target.

© 2021 Eschate

(1) The Constitutionality of Government-Imposed Bodily Intrusions
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=cl_pubs
https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2016/06/17/three-constitutional-basics-every-abortion-rights-supporter-know/
(2) On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty, Pope John XXIII,  11 April 1963
(3) Ten Key Moments in the History of Marriage,  Lauren Everitt, BBC News Magazine, March 14,  2012  “As early as the 12th Century, Roman Catholic theologians and writers referred to marriage as a sacrament, a sacred ceremony tied to experiencing God’s presence. However, it wasn’t until the Council of Trent in 1563 that marriage was officially deemed one of the seven sacraments, says Elizabeth Davies, of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales…”
(4) Three Gifts of Marriage: Companionship, Passion and Purpose,  Chris Grace,  July 17, 2015 Biola University Center for Marriage and Relationships

Links to Related Articles

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=yjlf
https://www.unfpa.org/news/bodily-autonomy-busting-7-myths-undermine-individual-rights-and-freedoms  (Personally, one o f my favorite links. It defines what a GLOBAL civilization could be and cuts to the fine points of bodily integrity for each and every human being across the planet)

The two links below are both positive and telling. The fact that women’s rights had to be more clearly set out from the Declaration of HUMAN rights makes it painfully clear that for some, women were not quite covered under HUMAN rights…
https://www.ohchr.org/documents/events/whrd/womenrightsarehr.pdf
https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cedaw.aspx