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Last week, I solicited suggestions for Constitutional amendments. Many of the responses were familiar: There are ongoing debates about the extent to which corporations should be treated as people, for example, and both sides in the abortion debate were keen on permanently codifying their preferences. I appreciate all the email, but below I've decided to focus on the suggestions that I've never seen widely discussed or debated, the better to provoke civic thought. Except where otherwise indicated, I express no opinion about whether these are good or bad ideas.

Keep Your Laws Off Their Bodies

Terry Rolon writes:



Legal jargon aside, an adult person should be sovereign over their own bodies and free to do anything they wish to it without limit. They ought to be able to ingest anything, even if it kills them. They ought to be able end their life at any time for any reason. The decision to do so ought to be outside the reach of government.



Says Sarath Krishnaswamy:



Congress shall pass no law regarding actions between or among consenting adults on private property, where the effects of such actions are reasonably wholly contained to the sphere of said adults, said express consent, and said property.



This would seem to make possible a legal market for kidneys.