A Clarification About Bodily Autonomy

Appealing to bodily autonomy, the moral principle that someone is free to do with their body what they wish without objections from others, is rather popular.  While it is associated with very specific moral and political issues of today like abortion, it has broader ramifications and more inherent limitations than many people admit, likely in part because they have not even thought of them despite how their own words make this side of the issue somewhat obvious.  It is actually impossible for everyone to have a right to do truly anything they want with their body.  In fact, the most staunch proponents of moral systems rooted in a positive approach to bodily autonomy must contradict themselves to object to acts like rape or physical abuse.

If no one has the right to tell someone else what they should or should not do with their body, then it would ironically be wrong to tell people not to physically assault, murder, or rape others, among other things.  Each of these acts involves one person using their body to harm another person's body--in an unjust way on a moral framework like that of Christianity--and thus a universal right to never be criticized or condemned for how a person uses their body is incompatible with condemning these practices.  This is almost completely ignored by people who continuously cry out that bodily autonomy means they can do whatever they want.

Bodily autonomy simply does not mean that people are morally free to do whatever they want with their bodies, as even a single moral obligation pertaining to how one should treat others means that there is no right to use one's body in an immoral way.  Such a thing cannot be true due to the contradiction at its heart!  At most, every individual can have a right to do with their body anything that is not immoral, not anything it is possible for them to subjectively wish to do.  Anyone who does not believe this but believes that bodily autonomy means that some specific act is automatically valid by default just selectively believes whatever is convenient for their assumptions and preferences.

No one can have a right to do anything evil, and there are no rights to anything if morality does not exist.  Either way, whether or not there are moral obligations, the idea that anyone at all should never be told not to do something with their body is utterly untrue.  However, if there are moral obligations, it is every individual's right to do anything at all that does not violate them if they merely wish to do so.  It is the people who try to selectively defend something like abortion while condemning something like assault (physical or sexual) that do not understand this.  Ideological and behavioral inconsistencies give this away.  If they genuinely cared about truth and were intentional about reflecting carefully, this contradiction would never be a part of anyone's worldview.