Thursday, July 16, 2009

When your body doesn't feel like it's yours

Body Identity

I've blogged before about people who want a healthy limb amputated, and who will go to great lengths -- often life-threatening lengths -- to get rid of the limb in question.

Now researchers have found that, as I suspected, the problem is a neurological one, not a psychiatric one.

I've advocated safe amputations for these folks, after all attempts at less radical treatment fail. And here it turns out that a neurological test can diagnose them for certain.

And if, as they say, the prochoice movement is about letting people make their own (however unpopular) decisions about what to do with their bodies, they ought to take up the cause of folks with BIID as well. Just as they ought to be fighting for easier access to tubal ligations (which, again, are about people acting on THEIR OWN BODIES).

Or is it really less about bodily integrity and more about just destroying fetuses?

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