Mandating Nature’s Course

Sherry F. Colb & Michael C. Dorf

Sherry F. Colb was C.S. Wong Professor, Cornell Law School. She died in August 2022, leaving behind a partial and preliminary draft of this Article. Michael C. Dorf is Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, and was married to Professor Colb from 1991 until her death. Because readying this Article for publication required a substantial amount of further research, writing, and editing, Professor Dorf has chosen to identify himself as a co-author to make clear that he bears responsibility for any errors that Professor Colb would have corrected if she had had the opportunity.

11 Feb 2025

Laws that substantially restrict abortion, gender-affirming care, and aid in dying do not merely forbid particular acts; they effectively mandate burdensome bodily obligations. Yet many proponents of such restrictions purport to support a right to bodily autonomy in other contexts, for example by opposing public health vaccination and masking mandates. They distinguish the former restrictions on the ground that such laws merely allow nature to take its course (NTIC). The NTIC claim is widespread. It may appeal to religion, a tendency to equate nature with wholesomeness, or a version of the act/omission distinction. Nonetheless, the NTIC defense fails because it rests on unarticulated normative grounds for attributing some but not all results of legal prohibitions to nature. Rejecting NTIC claims rightly focuses attention on whether strong countervailing interests justify particular restrictions on bodily autonomy.

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