Governing the Body in a Disunited Kingdom: Gender, Autonomy, and Constitutional Conflict in the UK

This paper examines how constitutional authority over the body is articulated and contested across the UK’s four nations, offering new insights into the territorial politics of autonomy and recognition within a formally unitary yet substantively fragmented constitutional order. Focusing on recent flashpoints in gender recognition, abortion, and assisted dying, the paper explores how devolved and central governments assert overlapping claims to regulate bodily autonomy — a core site where political authority, national identity, and minority protection converge. Using a documentary analysis of legislation, parliamentary debates, judicial rulings, and activist commentary, the paper engages with feminist constitutional theory to conceptualise these tensions as part of a gendered cartography of constitutional power. From the UK Government’s veto of Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, to Northern Ireland’s abortion framework and Westminster’s control over end-of-life legislation, the study shows how deeply politicised conflicts over care, dignity, and vulnerability map onto territorial disputes and contested sovereignties. This research contributes to the workshop’s aim of understanding how self-determination is reconfigured under democratic backsliding and majoritarian pressures. It foregrounds embodied autonomy as a critical and often-overlooked dimension of autonomy claims and illuminates how asymmetric devolution interacts with gendered governance and constitutional pluralism. Rather than treating constitutions solely as legal instruments, the paper argues that they are also tools of social ordering, shaping whose bodies are recognised, whose claims are marginalised, and how authority is distributed across overlapping scales. As a stand-alone study, the paper advances the literature on feminist constitutionalism and British territorial politics by reframing constitutional conflict not only in terms of sovereignty and independence, but also through the governance of bodies. It contributes to the workshop by broadening the discussion of self-determination beyond territorial exit or secession, to include the contested governance of identity, vulnerability, and care under conditions of democratic strain.