Operating on a healthy body for no medical reason inverts what medicine is for

The argument

The case for criminalising unnecessary cosmetic surgery begins from the nature of surgery itself. Any operation carries risk: of anaesthetic complications, of infection, of bleeding, of nerve damage, of scarring, of results that cannot be reversed, and of the further operations that correcting a poor outcome requires. Proponents argue that medicine accepts these risks only because they are weighed against a condition that is itself harmful. Where there is no such condition, the whole weight of the risk falls on one side of the scale, and a healthy person is exposed to the possibility of serious harm in exchange for an alteration in appearance. Proponents argue that this is not simply a private miscalculation but a professional one, because the operation requires a surgeon. A doctor who cuts into a healthy body for no medical reason is, on this view, acting against the obligation that defines the role, and the law ought to recognise that as it recognises other limits consent does not override. Proponents note that the law already refuses to let consent justify certain kinds of bodily harm, and argue that there is no principled reason to treat surgery for appearance differently merely because it is performed in a clinic and paid for. The argument extends to what the practice does to medicine as a whole. Proponents argue that a lucrative market in elective procedures draws surgical training, theatre time, nursing capacity and research attention toward appearance and away from illness, and that it accustoms both doctors and patients to treating the body as something to be redesigned on request. Criminalisation, on this account, is how a society marks the difference between treating a person and selling them a procedure, and it is the only measure that removes the commercial incentive rather than supervising it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the argument proves far too much, since it would equally condemn tattooing, piercing, elective sterilisation, living organ donation and much of sports medicine, all of which impose risk on healthy bodies for non-medical reasons the law permits. They argue that it treats appearance as trivial when distress about appearance is often serious and sometimes the reason the person seeks help at all, which makes the line between cosmetic and reconstructive surgery far less clear than the argument requires. Critics add that criminalisation does not remove demand but moves it to practitioners who are unlicensed and unaccountable, so the predictable result is more harm to the people the measure is meant to protect, not less.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Surgical risk is real but it is quantified, disclosed and accepted in many permitted procedures, so risk alone cannot distinguish this case. [Rejecting P2] Distress about appearance is itself a condition people seek help for, so the premise that the body is simply healthy assumes what is in dispute. [Rejecting P3] The harms the law refuses to let consent justify are violent ones, not regulated procedures performed by licensed practitioners. [Rejecting C] Criminalising demand that will persist moves it to unlicensed practitioners, which increases the harm the argument is concerned with.