- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
"We deeply empathize with parents who face difficult issues raising children with significant physical and intellectual disabilities. However, we hold as non-negotiable the principle that personal and physical autonomy of all people with disabilities be regarded as sacrosanct.
This is from the link you posted. You seem to feel that Ashley was cheated by the system of her opportunity for independence. This shows either a tragic level of ignorance about the case or a desire to distort the case for your own means. This child was cheated out of her autonomy by a cruel twist of nature, not by doctors or her family. She CANNOT ever make a decision for herself. If there are future implications for this case, then they apply only to those very rare cases where an undeveloped brain is encased in a normal body. There is no "system" that will fix her. The best her family can do is to give her whatever pleasure she can experience from life by taking her places and not leaving her in a bed all day, and to protect her from whatever pain they can. This girl has a malformation that keeps her from ever growing into a full, thinking, person. Using her as a poster child for "autonomy" is an insult to the majority of the disabled community members who are able and willing to make decisions for themselves.
Let her live her life with whatever comfort and joy her parents can bring her, and go back and fight for the rights of people who actually have the intellect to care. This girl is not a poster-child for disability. She not merely disabled. She's in a category too rare to even have a name.
