Summary
A seven-year-old physically disabled girl with a severe brain disorder is taken into hospital by her parents for a series of major operations. The girl's parents already know that, mentally, she will remain a child forever. By the time the girl goes home, her growth has been stunted by estrogen therapy and she has undergone a hysterectomy and an appendectomy. She will never menstruate, and never give birth.
If such treatment of someone unable to answer back sounds akin to a dystopian science-fiction epic, or recalls the fascistic desire for some flaw-free master race of Hitler's Germany, think again. The operations were undertaken in 21st-century Seattle, Washington, on a child born in 1997. The thinking behind it, the parents of the girl who became known as Ashley X reasoned on the blog they set up in 2007, was to give their daughter a better quality of life, without having to deal with the everyday complications able-bodied people are seemingly better equipped for.See the full content of this document
Extract
Deep in a Moral Maze
Disability activists disagreed, and a storm ensued on the plethora of internet forums that revealed a far more complex set of arguments than any militantly polarised black and white views might suggest. One of the contributors to the forums was Robert Softly, actor, writer and long-term advocate...
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