The foundations of informed consent and bodily self-sovereignty: a positive suggestion

In medical care, the obtaining of informed consent is taken to be required prior to treatment in order to ensure that patients sufficiently understand the potential risks and benefits of a given medical procedure. In this paper, I begin by looking at the history of informed consent and consider how the norms and laws in medicine have evolved away from benevolent paternalism and toward a blanket obligation to obtain informed consent. In so doing, I consider what values might be taken to underpin such a requirement. After dismissing some unsatisfactory answers, I offer a positive view as to the constellation of values I think informed consent ought to be protecting. I call these bodily self-sovereignty, which I take to be a coupling of two groups of values: autonomy and non-domination on the one hand, and self-ownership and personal integrity on the other. Given the connection between autonomy and responsibility, autonomy is both required for the act of consenting, and respected by allowing it. And, because of our special and inescapable relationship to our own bodies, this authorization is particularly important when our bodies are involved. So, I suggest that informed consent protects our self-sovereignty over our own bodies.