Freedom of expression

Freedom of expression (FoE) is the fundamental principle that gives individuals the power to express their opinions and criticize ideas, individual actions and institutions, free of legal or governmental retaliation, censorship or punishment. This principle allows for the flow and diversity of ideas in science and society. 

In science, FoE allows for the unrestricted generation and selection of ideas, resulting in our best understanding of reality. FoE in science is what allowed, for example, heliocentrism and the theory of evolution to thrive, despite strong rejection from religious institutions. 

In society, FoE allows citizents to fight for human rights, propose modifications to the law and demand government accountability. FoE allows society to progress towards better living standards through the proposal of better policies and rejection of bad ones. 

However, in the process, FoE also allows for offensive ideas to be expressed (however subjective the offense may be), but those ideas should be dealt with through equivalent forms of expression (e.g., counterprotests promoting the social rejection of such ideas), not with state-sponsored censorship.

State-sponsored censorship is a dangerously underestimated idea that can be easily used by the government and those in power to stop individuals from enjoying their individual rights, which can potentially lead and has, many times in history, led to functional totalitarianism.

Calls for the legal restriction of FoE are hypocritically intolerant contradictions, in which individuals use their FoE (hypocrisy) to demand restrictions (contradiction) to someone else's FoE (intolerance), instead of using their FoE to counterprotest against the disagreeable ideas.

Therefore, limitations to FoE should be minimal and restricted to very clear exceptions, such as direct threats of bodily injury or death, or the intentional fabrication or spread of false information that results in damage to the physical wellbeing or reputation of a person or institution. Additionally, intolerance towards someone's FoE has negative consequences to the population as a whole and should never be called for based on the subjective rejection of an idea.

Bodily autonomy

Bodily autonomy is the principle that gives individuals control over what happens to their own body, preventing any form of exploitation or unnecessary harm.

Children are particularly vulnerable to violations of their bodily autonomy. These violations range from minimally harmful aesthetic procedures (e.g., ear piercing) to forced irreversible medically-assisted body damage (e.g., male and female genital mutilation, involuntary sterilization), usually performed under false premises or based on distorted research results.

The deprivation of bodily autonomy is also considered a form of violation of the principle. For example, women have been, historically and up to this day, deprived from their reproductive rights (in the form of safe and legal abortion) under the fallacious (usually religious) argument that a fetus is a biologically independent human being whose bodily autonomy is more important than the autonomy of the woman who carries it. Other instances of violations of bodily autonomy include the criminalization of drug use, sex work, and voluntary medically-assisted euthanasia (even after proper psychological evaluation and counseling).

Violations of the bodily autonomy principle have also been observed in the scientific community. For example, in 1951, cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks were used, without her consent, to create what is currently called the HeLa cell line, resulting in an unacceptable breach of her genome-related privacy and patient's rights. 

More serious violations of the bodily autonomy principle occurred during World War II, when nazi physicians conducted a series of torturous pseudoscientific medical experiments on prisoners (including children) in nazi concentration camps. The absurdity and brutality of such experiments led to the development of the Nuremberg code of medical ethics to prevent medical exploitation and injustice. 

As with other fundamental principles, limitations to bodily autonomy should be minimal and restricted to very clear exceptions, such as when a person's actions are considered dangerous to themselves or others (in which case their bodily autonomy can be limited in order to protect public safety), or when a person is medically diagnosed as mentally unfit to make decisions about their own body (in which case a legal representative may be appointed to make decisions on their behalf). However, abusive limitations to bodily autonomy can lead to social problems that are comparable to slavery.