Half-ass Support of Bodily Autonomy is Unconscionable by Carl Hart
By Carl Hart
Hell is being Black in the United States without heroin. And man, am I going through it. But not in that stereotyped, Afterschool Special, Hollywood bullshit way you’ve probably been taught. I don’t have the chills or sweats. I ain’t jonesing for a hit or nothing like that. Rather, I am wracked with anguish stemming from the ruling class eroding our inalienable human rights without a life-or-death fight.
Take for example, bodily autonomy, a right recognized as so fundamental that damn-near every democratic government professes to protect it. Simply put, it means that you and I are in charge of the decisions about our own bodies. You determine whether you’ll have children and how many; not your government nor its Supreme Court Justices. I determine whether I’ll take heroin or anything else; not my government nor self-appointed moralists. This God-given right is even enshrined in the founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, which guarantees each of us “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Also, it is codified in the country’s Constitution, which protects our right to privacy among other rights. In essence, what we choose to do with our bodies, especially in the privacy of our own homes, is our own damn business.
But now our right to bodily autonomy is besieged by the very people who claim to be our liberators. A good case in point is Donald Trump and his henchmen and -women. In his bid to regain the American presidency, Mr. Trump campaigned “to preserve the extraordinary vision of our founding fathers,” who undoubtedly placed a high premium on personal freedom and liberty having had to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the British monarchy. Admittedly, the framers of the United States foundational documents fell short of delivering self-evident human rights to all of the country’s inhabitants, most glaringly its Black enslaved population, my ancestors. But this blatant injustice does not nullify the irrefutable goals articulated by the sublime words etched in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution: freedom and equality.
So, it seems paradoxical that restricting reproductive freedom was the litmus test for Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court appointees. They comprise one-third of the current Justices on the Court, outnumbering appointments by any other President. Their impact has been swift and cruel.
By a six-to-three margin, the Supreme Court terminated a woman’s right to have an abortion. Prior to this judgment, the abortion right had been explicitly protected as part of the right to privacy. Without a hint of irony, the majority Justices boasted that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people,” knowing full well that their ruling paved the way for individual states to ban abortions and restrict its people’s bodily autonomy. The right to bodily autonomy, the Court’s ruling read, does not extend to abortion, in part, because such logic could then be used to justify drug use, sex work, and other personal choices that are currently criminalized.
Surely, the Justices must know that this embarrassingly ignorant rationale is directly antithetical to our nation’s foundational promise of freedom as a birthright. Surely, the Justices must know that their revered founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin in particular, were avid, unapologetic opioid users. Regarding bodily autonomy, Mr. Jefferson put it like this, “If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” If only members of the current United States Supreme Court would demonstrate a similar fidelity to this most basic human right and our country’s foundational promise, the Court might halt its disgraceful descent into the abyss of dishonor and irrelevancy.
The Hypocrisy of Selective Rights
And while I was initially encouraged by the stream of dissenting opinions, I must now confess that I am deeply disappointed that practically all fail to express any concern about the right to bodily autonomy for drug users, sex workers or anyone other than pregnant persons in distress. Most protests can be summed up as emotional appeals seeking pity for victims of rape or incest and patients requiring abortions for medical reasons. Regrettably, the chief aim of these appeals is to secure abortion access for this circumscribed group of women, while ignoring others who want access as a matter of personal choice.
As one prominent example, consider the words of Kamala Harris as she campaigned to become president, “the notion that we would tell a woman…a survivor of a crime that…they have no right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. I think that’s unconscionable.”
It's unconscionable that Ms. Harris consistently frames the bodily autonomy issue within the narrow confines of preserving the abortion right exclusively for survivors of crimes. According to her logic, women who have been sexually violated and gotten pregnant in the commission of the crime are entitled to bodily autonomy, so long as its exercise is the termination of a pregnancy. And the rest of us, I suppose, can fuck off.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that advocating on behalf of such survivors isn’t important. It is, and that should be obvious. Equally important though, we must be cognizant of this brutal fact: half-ass support of bodily autonomy isn’t real support of bodily autonomy. It’s a counterfeit, and one that’s killing us.
Drug Policies: The War on Bodily Autonomy
I have studied the effects of drugs for more than three decades and have learned that draconian drug laws and their enforcement exact far more harm than the most vilified drugs can ever do. Each year, hundreds of thousands of drug users are stigmatized, imprisoned and killed for simply being identified as such. To be clear, I am not referring to cannabis-only users nor am I alluding to faddish psychedelic enthusiasts. I am speaking about the poor souls who come from society’s underclass. They are the descendants of formerly-enslaved people. They use the same drugs, and at similar rates, as their white middle-class counterparts but are punished more frequently and more harshly. They are the disparaged, the subjugated. In the United States, for example, one of the most disgusting cumulative consequences of the so-called drug war is that while Black men make up only about six percent of the general population, they represent almost 40 percent of the country’s incarcerated population. This is heart breaking. This is slavery by another name.
Yet, in the midst of this nightmare, I have watched for years liberal colleagues grandstand in their ivory towers of academia and NGOs and regurgitate “I have a dream-like” platitudes and other human rights-claiming trivialities. Their remarks are curated so that they come across as reasonable and decent people. They lament the war on drugs and boast that no one should be imprisoned for drug use. They wholeheartedly support people’s right to bodily autonomy, with caveats. They claim that heroin use, for one glaring exception, is too risky and is rightly prohibited for the protection of potential users. Perhaps people can delude themselves into believing that paternalism is actually admirable if they themselves are a part of the establishment.
Paternalism isn’t admirable. It’s cruel.
Still, these wannabe good people advise the oppressed to be patient and caution that progress occurs in an incremental fashion. They point to the recent relaxation of laws restricting cannabis use, as if such changes have any bearing on the suffering of users of other drugs. This reasoning is analogous to telling a woman diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer that she should be encouraged by the recent approval of a menopause medication. It’s absurd. Perhaps it is easy for these tone-deaf do-gooders to be cautious rather than courageous because they have never had to deal with the painful cries of loved ones brutalized for merely exercising their God-given rights.
I am not saying these things to be unkind. Rather, I am trying to draw attention to a gross injustice. I am trying to highlight the connection between your bodily autonomy and my own.
In the process, I have to dispel a few harmful myths about drugs. For starters, most users will not become addicted. More than seventy percent of people who use drugs such as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine are not, and do not become, addicts. As for the minority of addicted users, of course they should receive treatment, if they desire. But importantly, these individuals do not forfeit their right to bodily autonomy. Too often, drug addiction is used as a rationale to rob people of their rights.
Drug use comes with other risks, just as anything else. Think about the tremendous risks associated with American football, mixed martial arts, pregnancy and childbirth, among others. Drug-use risks though, are significantly compounded by drug prohibition laws and their enforcement. Consider recent developments in the United States drug markets, where drug-law enforcement efforts are intense. Fentanyl has essentially displaced heroin, because its production is less labor-intensive, it is more suitable for smuggling in smaller quantities, and it is more profitable. That fentanyl is more potent than heroin – less of it is needed to produce an effect – means that the odds of overdosing are higher. In a nutshell, fentanyl is basically the only available opioid and its use is riskier than heroin. Ironically, most self-respecting heroin users prefer heroin over fentanyl. And the contest ain’t even close.
To add insult to injury, anti-drug laws make it illegal to possess equipment used to facilitate safer use. For example, consumers who use equipment to determine the chemical composition of their substances or a scale to weigh out the amount of drug that they plan to consume run an additional risk of being arrested. Given that prohibited drugs are obtained from unregulated markets devoid of quality controls, drug paraphernalia laws punish sensible behavior and operate against the goals of public health. This is unconscionable. This is inhumane.
So now, I ask you, how do I stay sane and humane in a society where hypocrisy and double standards reign? How do I fight moral frauds and remain merciful? Because frankly, I don’t know. But heroin has certainly helped. It helps me face brazen injustices with calmness and mercy. Its characteristic opioid effects of dreamy serenity, free of anxiety, make it easier for me to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by mean-spirited people and unjust laws. It helps me stay just in the fight for justice.
I can hear the pearls clutching. But so that we are clear, I am not addicted to heroin or anything else (not that it has any bearing on the soundness of my arguments). My use of the drug is similar to most people’s use of the drug alcohol. Still, I have seen the self-righteous repeatedly indulge in ad hominem attacks to dismiss sound, evidence-based arguments.
I am often reminded of Billie Holiday’s quip in response to criticism of her heroin use, “Heroin not only kept me alive— maybe it also kept me from killing.” I can relate.
If you rob people of their bodily autonomy, you can go to hell.
Carl L. Hart (@drcarlhart) is Mamie Phipps Clark Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and author of “Drug Use for Grown-ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear.” https://drcarlhart.com
