ho owns my body? In everyday life and conversation, the answer is straightforward: of course I own my body. Who else could? It is, after allbody – anything apart from self-ownership is a denial of a basic freedom. From this intuition, thinkers have constructed political philosophies as far apart as liberalism and anarchism. Many of our cherished ideals – from autonomy to human dignity – find their genesis, and ultimate expression, in our bodies. Choosing what we do – and what is done – to our bodies grounds women’s right to an abortion, the ban on human trafficking, and the prohibitions against physical and sexual assault, to name a few obvious cases. More prosaically, our intuition
