Organ rights

@MoataRamira tweeted

I don't think anyone incl govt has the right to tell an individual what they can do with their reproductive organs. End of story.

@Meteria, leader of the New Zealand Green Party, retweeted it.

I think we have to parse @Meteria's retweeting as defining "tell an individual what they can do" to include commercial transactions other than prostitution: payment and monetary incentives == coercion. I'm pretty sure they opposed those folks who suggested paying beneficiaries to use long-term birth control measures. What's the Green Party stance on paid surrogacy? Or payment for gamete donation? Prohibitions on either mean that government's coming in pretty hard telling folks what they can do with their reproductive organs.

But it isn't just the commercialisation that they oppose. Let's stop privileging reproductive organs for the moment. Recall that Sue Kedgley, another Green Party MP, was not particularly opposed to that extended families have veto rights over expressed individual organ donation wishes. The Green Party there didn't oppose that others could tell an individual what he could do with his organs. And that isn't even commercial transactions.

How about the right to do what I like with my lungs and liver? If alcohol and tobacco somehow were consumed via the reproductive organs, would the Greens be more in favour of individual freedom?

Perhaps the simplest is that a retweet doesn't always imply agreement. But I still have a hard time reconciling the Greens' pro-choice stance on reproductive freedoms with their anti-choice stance when it comes to other organs, and especially where there's suggestion of commercial interest.