Children with disabilities

[Rubystars]

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There is absolutely nothing wrong with what they did. I hope that other parents will have access to this same treatment to help their own severely disabled children.

The girl will permanently be stuck at the mental age of an infant, and a child's body is much more dignified for that than an adult's body.

She has no need of reproductive organs, as she will not ever be able to consent to sex. She will never have the mental capacity to be able to do that! Leaving them in would only cause discomforts, like bed sores on breasts, menstrual cramps, bleeding, and if she were raped having these organs opens up the possibility of having to be pregnant herself. Removing these organs which are useless to her and would only cause more problems if left in is the right thing to do!

The people with hangups about these things tend to think of how it would be wrong to do this to a healthy child. She's got special needs that healthy children don't have, and mature, logical decisions have to be made about her care and her future, and I believe her parents made the right ones.

[DisgruntledBadger]

At first, I was pretty freaked out by the idea. My brain was screaming, "How dare they! How could they do that to their little girl!"...and then I started thinking.

I remember when my grandfather's dementia got so bad that my grandmother couldn't care for him at home. I remember watching how badly it hurt her not to be physically able to care for her husband. I remember how my mother and my aunt cried when they realized that they couldn't do it either. Pawpaw was six feet tall and well-built. Imagine having a six foot tall toddler running 'round your house. It wasn't pretty. The entire family pitched in to try to help with his care when he was put into a nursing home, but it just wasn't the same for him as it was to be in his own house. Thankfully, he was only aware of his surroundings for a few months after he was put in a home.

If I were in the shoes of Ashley's parents, I think that I would make the same choice that they made. It ensures that she will have the best possible quality of life for her situation. She'll be able to go places with her family. Her parents will be better able to handle the daily physical therapy that I'm sure she requires. She will never get too big to be held in their laps when she's having a bad day. Her parents will (hopefully) be able to care for her for the rest of their natural lives, and when they die, it will be easier for her guardian to care for her.

I sure as hell hope, though, that it's a choice I never have to make.

[Boozy]

there is a lot more to this situation that we don't know, I can not pass judgement about the actions of the parents.

I agree. Its too easy for all of us, none of whom have been in this family's shoes, to pass judgement. I wasn't going to jump in on this one and say anything, because I really felt strongly that this should have been a personal and private decision from the beginning.
But I think that in itself needed to be said. So for what its worth, there you go.

[FormerCallingCardRep]

When I was in the hospitla last week my roomate was a mentally handicap 48 year old woman that was on the mental age of a 6 year old. She had fallen and broke a vertibrae in her neck and had to have surgery. It would have been so much easier on her mother if she would have still had the body of a child. They had gone in through her neck and replaced the broken bones with a metal cage. She was in a lot of pain, but all she could tell the nurses was that she had a sore throat. They totally ignored the fact that possibly her incision was hurting.