> In any event, whatever right to bodily autonomy you think exists, the constitution is plainly more concerned about the right to bear firearms. The document devotes a whole amendment to firearms. But the most you can say about the right to bodily autonomy is that the constitution’s silence on it doesn’t preclude its existence.
What it says is that the constitution cares a lot about the power of the government to regulate the natural right to hold weapons and monopolize violence and how that monopoly works. Bodily autonomy comes for the natural born right of liberty from the government and I don’t see the governments power to regulate medical care anywhere in the positive enumeration of powers in the constitution. Like I don’t even know what gives the government constitutional power to regulate medical care in the first place.
> What it says is that the constitution cares a lot about the power of the government to regulate the natural right to hold weapons and monopolize violence and how that monopoly works.
That's not what it says! It says: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The operative language is no less emphatic than the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech."
Again, nobody would adopt this tortured reading if the underlying right was speech. You'd have Tik Toks saying "shall not be infringed means shall not be infringed!"
> Bodily autonomy comes for the natural born right of liberty from the government
What is the source of these supposed "natural born rights?"
> I don’t see the governments power to regulate medical care anywhere in the positive enumeration of powers in the constitution. Like I don’t even know what gives the government constitutional power to regulate medical care in the first place.
The federal government doesn't have the power to regulate medical care. But the state governments are not governments of enumerated powers. The state governments are successors of the British Parliament, and, "vested as they are with general police power, require no specific grant of authority in the Federal Constitution to legislate with respect to ... public health, welfare and morals." Joseph E. Seagram & Sons v. Hostetter, 384 U.S. 35, 41 (1966).
> What is the source of these supposed "natural born rights?"
The US Declaration of Independence lists it:
> We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
But I’m not sure what you mean by “origin” and clearly these truths are not self-evident to some.
> The federal government doesn't have the power to regulate medical care
Tell that to the FDA, DEA and FTC.
> That's not what it says! It says: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
And yet we’ve regularly infringed that right if that right is interpreted at the individual level. Also “arms” as understood in the constitution was specifically around personal weapons an individual could carry (muskets, pistols, swords). Not necessarily machine guns or weapons of mass destruction; even Scalia, one of the more conservative justices recognized this, writing in Heller that weapons that are “dangerous and unusual” (e.g., machine guns, bombs, or military-grade explosives) can be restricted.