The flourishing autonomy paradigm

The autonomy paradigm continues to flourish, planted as it is in the fertile soil of American rights thinking, anchored as it is by roots that run deep in the structure of American law, tended as it is by legions of the faithful. That paradigm is sustained by the methodologically and substantively hyper-rationalistic assumption that autonomy is what people primarily and pervasively want and need. Correspondingly and crucially, the law of bioethics assumes its principal task is to remove impediments to the exercise of autonomy, that once those impediments are gone, people will naturally gather evidence about the risks and benefits of each medical choice, apply their values to that evidence, and reach a considered decision.

Carl Schneider, The Practice of Autonomy: Patients, Doctors, and Medical Decisions, p. 9.