ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the relationship between autonomy and common law in the medical law sphere. Autonomy in medical law has traditionally been bound up with controlling access to one's body, and what can be done to it. Given the obvious significance of a finding of mental capacity, it will be useful to consider just what it means and entails in medical law. It is suggested that the law seeks to set up a division between the nature of patients' decisions and tests for mental capacity in a way that maps directly onto a cleavage between patients' values and their ability to make decisions about whether to accept or refuse medical treatment. Questions of identity and responsibility have arisen in the medical law sphere in relation to the treatment of pregnant women. These questions have been especially evident in the area of abortion law and in cases where women refuse to consent to delivery of children by way of Caesarean section.
