There are some norms we should have no right to bust, much less expect the breakage to be facilitated by the medical profession.

People sometimes tell me that nothing can be more extreme than the transgender craze. I disagree. The next step is already in sight, what is sometimes called “transableism.”

Transableism is an advocacy term for a mental illness known as Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID). People with the condition anguish that they were born with body parts or capacities that they should not have. This may express as an obsession to become an amputee or paraplegic, as just two examples.

Here is an extreme case from the U.K. as reported by the Daily Mail:

A surgeon with a “sexual obsession” for cutting off parts of his body had his own legs amputated as part of an insurance scam, officials in the UK said on Thursday.

Doctor Neil Hopper, 49, submerged his own legs for eight hours in a combination of ice and dry ice so they would have to be removed, while falsely claiming to his insurers that he had sepsis, prosecutor Nicholas Lee said. . . . Hopper had suffered from body dysphoria since childhood and saw his feet as an “unwelcome extra” and a “persisting never-ending discomfort,” said defense attorney Andrew Langdon.

Of course, most BIID cases do not involve sexual obsession, and I know of no other reports of insurance fraud like this one. But those important points about this particular story aside, how does BIID differ from the transgender phenomenon?

You could say that cutting off healthy body parts violate the “do no harm” ethic of medicine. But that concept is becoming increasingly malleable, as seen with radical transgender interventions, including on children — which can lead to sterility and sexual dysfunction — and transforming euthanasia/assisted suicide into just another “medical treatment.”

Moreover, such disabling surgical alterations are already happening. A bit ago, a Canadian surgeon amputated the fingers of a BIID patient who fervently believed they did not belong on his body, which the media reported as a resounding success. A psychologist once blinded a patient with a caustic substance because she was convinced her true self could not see. He was not subject to professional discipline as far as I know, and a fawning media piece described how happy the patient is now that she can’t see.

So, some activists and bioethicists are asking: Why should transgendered people be allowed to have their bodies fundamentally altered, while transabled people — who believe similarly that their “true identity” is as a disabled person — can’t receive similar relief?

Society is increasingly accepting that logic, if not yet all of its ramifications. Indeed, defining one’s personal identity became a fundamental constitutional right in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled (my emphasis): “The fundamental liberties protected by this [Due Process] Clause include most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In addition, these liberties extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs.” I see no limiting principle to that bold assertion!

You might rightly say, “But Wesley, very few people suffer from BIID.” True. But that’s also what they used to say about transgenderism, the numbers of which are now continually increasing. These things tend to be socially contagious.

I don’t see an end to the current drift toward an anything goes culture unless we expressly change our societal expectations and engage in calculated self-restraint. There are some norms we should have no right to bust, much less expect the breakage to be facilitated by the medical profession. I fear that the question will eventually become whether we will enforce any boundaries at all that limit the great god, personal autonomy.