Letters to the Editor
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Not going that way .. yet.
Medical technology has evolved to keep these children alive -- now will it evolve to create artificially permanent children?
It's not clear that this is quite the question raised by the "Ashley" case. The girl in question has, if reports are accurate, basically no brain. Like, most of it is literally not there. In such a case, the idea of one's internal life maturing, even in a dysfunctional or incomplete way, are pretty much moot. Even the ability to learn, on a basic level, is questionable.
In a society obsessed with youth and infantalization, and in the throes of simultaneous urges toward repression of adolescent sexuality and sexualization of pre-adolescence, this girl's case can easily be seen as an example of everything that's gone crazy.
And if she were to become a precedent for the expansion of medical procedures to enable parental fetish, then there would be reason to that. But as it is it's not clear that it's working that way.
At least, not yet.