Who decides what you can and can’t do with your own body? From conception to death and everything in between, including circumcision, vaccination and amputation, Insight explores the laws, ethics and pressures that dictate our bodily autonomy. Watch at 8.30pm Tuesday 4 March on SBS or live on .
Max Roberts was born in the late 1950s and, like the majority of Australian boys at the time, he was circumcised a few days later.
Now 67, Max is still angry he was never given the choice about his own body. Nor were his parents.
“My mother was sitting up in hospital … and the doctor who delivered me poked his head around the door and said: ‘I’m here to do your boy now’,” he told Insight.
“And a little bit later I was down the hall in the nursery, screaming my lungs out in excruciating pain as he ripped the foreskin from the head of my penis.”
Max has always felt his body is “incomplete”, that his life has suffered because of a decision not made by him.
“I’ve been with men who have had their foreskin. And I’ve seen the pleasure that that’s given them. And I’ll never be able to experience the pleasure that they have.”
He believes the bodies of babies and children should be protected until they can make decisions for their own body.
“Boys have a right to a whole body.”
Max believes he will never experience the erogenous pleasure of men who have not been circumcised, which makes him sad. Source: Supplied
Shame and moral questions
Media company founder Hannah Ferguson, 27, is also pro-choice when it comes to her body. Last year she had an abortion, but at times felt the “tension” of having to justify her choice to others.
“I felt that I had to struggle with some sort of shame or moral question, because that’s what women who had abortions had to do,” she told Insight.
“That was an agenda that … ‘anti-choice’ advocates would impose onto me. And I actually am determined to not feel that because it was my choice to make.”
Hannah Ferguson says she felt shame “imposed” on her after her abortion. Source: Supplied / FB
Hannah believes . Abortion is legal in Australia but the window of opportunity to carry out an abortion varies between states.
Studies show Australian support for abortion is between 70 and 80 per cent, and the issue is not on the policy agenda at the federal election.
Prime Minister Antony Albanese described the , in 2022 as “very unfortunate”, while Liberal leader Peter Dutton has declared there would be no change to abortion policy if he wins government.
Hannah believes the choice around abortion lies not with government or legal scholars, but the woman and her doctor. Legislation removes choice and bodily autonomy, she says.
“I think that abortion being put onto the table is just another opportunity to misdirect, to redirect the population, to focus on women and to blame women, and to put a pressure on us to have to come out and advocate for our rights and our self-determination yet again.”
Former senior Qantas pilot Graham Hood dismissed his former organisation’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates, believing in his right to choose.
“Informed consent was a priority of the way we live in Australia,” he said.
“I believed the [COVID-19 vaccine] hadn’t been properly tested. There was no way I could give informed consent.”
Whose right to choose?
From the right to terminate a pregnancy to the decision to end our own life, and our choices around vaccination, circumcision or even self-amputation, society has consistently debated who holds the ultimate authority: the government or the individual?
Dr Joanna Howe is a prominent abortion rights opponent who helped draft.
It sought to restrict abortion in the third trimester of a pregnancy in favour of inducing early labour, which terminates the pregnancy but saves the baby.
She has also been banned from parts of the South Australian parliament for allegedly intimidating MPs on the night of a vote on the draft bill. Howe has rejected these claims.
Joanna argues that laws about the collective public good also make killing a crime.
Joanna Howe says her goal is to make abortion “unthinkable”. Source: Supplied
“If a mother doesn’t have a right to kill her baby 30 seconds after birth, why does she have a right to kill that baby 30 seconds before?” she said.
“Ultimately, I know that what I’m doing is speaking up for the most vulnerable and marginalised group in our society.”
Disability advocate Tammy Milne argues that individuals who prioritise their own interests over the community’s well-being are “selfish”, specifically those who chose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which contributes to herd immunity and safeguards the vulnerable.
“We live in a society now where it’s all individual and individualism,” she said.
“And I think we might have forgotten that we are a village. A very big village. And we take care of everybody in the village.”
‘We have to believe and trust’
The medical profession are at centre of the debate, having to abide by the law while working in their patients’ interests.
Surgeon Dr Peter Haertsch admits it’s not an easy balance.
He has treated patients with Body Integrity Identity Disorder, a rare mental health condition where someone feels that a healthy limb or body part doesn’t belong to them.
He said sufferers experience “intense emotional pain and discomfort” and they have “very unsettled lives”.
For these people, voluntary amputation is the “only treatment that appears to work”, he says.
Though this poses an ethical dilemma, he says.
“To find somebody who would do it … to go through all the ethical processes to work out whether or not this is, in fact, of benefit to the body.
“Having a dead limb amputated, that’s for the good of the patient. But to amputate a normal, healthy limb is a real issue.”
People with the very rare condition Body Integrity Identity Disorder, often have a strong desire to amputate of a limb they feel doesn’t belong to them. Source: Getty / NurPhoto
Dr Rebekah Hoffman, chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in NSW and ACT, says when it comes to abortion, there are very few situations where a foetus’s rights will come before its mother’s.
“The mothers’ rights will come first because they’re here, they’re present, they’re human, they’re alive,” she said.
Rebekah says while everything carries risk, it’s important to trust in the experts when making decisions about our body, with vaccines a good example.
“I’m not a lawyer. I leave that to my lawyers. The research and the science I have to leave to the researchers and the scientists, because that’s what they do every single day, and that’s what they’re good at,” she said.
“When we’re told that this is safe in the middle of a pandemic where people are dying at phenomenal levels, we absolutely have to believe in them and trust in them.
“It’s about understanding the consequences of making those choices. And as a doctor, when we’re talking about medical risks, that’s our job to ensure that the patient is able to understand those risks.”
Approximately 15 per cent of newborn boys in Australia are circumcised today. But since 2007, circumcision as a cosmetic procedure has been banned in all public hospitals.
Rebekah believes the procedure will continue to be available in the private health sector, and people should have the choice to have it.
“People choose to change their bodies because that’s their choice. And they can if they understand the risks and the benefits.”
Max advocates for removing the choice regarding circumcision. Like female genital mutilation, he would like to see the practice become illegal.
He would also like Medicare to stop rebates for parents who circumcise their children, and doctors to be able to discourage parents from choosing the procedure for those who are still too young to decide.
“Every single person should have a right to decide what happens to their body,” he says.
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