UK Citizens Bodies Now Belong to the State

Here's a little more Big Brother in the UK:

Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to take organs from dead patients without explicit consent.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that such a facility would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year.

The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted out of the national register or family members objected.

But patients' groups said that they were "totally opposed" to Mr Brown's plan, saying that it would take away patients' rights over their own bodies.

There are more than 8,000 patients waiting for an organ donation and more than 1,000 a year die without receiving the organ that could save their lives.

While I personally think that organ donation is a noble and good thing, the key word is "donation". The day the State says it can take your organs without the previously expressed permission of the patient or the family, the State owns your body, and that's the antithesis of freedom.

While I believe it would be good for everybody to sign up as an organ donor, it's wrong to make it mandatory regardless of what the objection might be, and it doesn't matter who might benefit from a government mandate like this. It's not freedom if you don't even own your own body.

And some of you might be inclined to say "AHA! That must mean you're against drug abuse laws and for abortion on demand because those are also examples of the government controlling your body."

Nice try, but that argument doesn't work. In an abortion you're not just affecting your body, you're affecting another living person's body and there is no right in the law to take another person's life. Regarding drug laws, I believe the government has a right to restrict certain behaviors based on maintaining social order. You don't have the right to take your body and rob a liquor store, nor should you have the right to use banned substances that could cause you to hurt innocents.

Personally, if you want to destroy your own life with illegal drugs and can do it without bringing harm to others, have at it, but that's not usually what happens. Once a person is in that cyle of dependency they tend to do things that damage society as a whole, such a criminal conduct to support their habits or impaired driving that can take innocent lives.

The UK program is a very bad idea, and is guaranteed to be a stepping stone to further encroachments on freedom. For instance, what if the government decides that you're too fat to be a good donor and therefore must stop bad eating habits and lose weight just in case a situation arises in which your organs become available? Will they then have the right to mandate your diet "for the greater good"?

It's a slippery slope.