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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
especially by the pert little quote from the parents about Ashley not needing a uterus, because she won't bear children. Any parent asserting that they know the complete reproductive and romantic future of their child is disturbing.
Parents of disabled young people often try to deny their sexual maturation; they try to believe that someone with the mind of a child or a non-standard body would not have sexual feelings or desires. It's dangerous to propagate a treatment that would allow parents to enforce an endless childhood on disabled adults.
But Ashley doesn't have Downs Syndrome, or Autism, or anything like that. She doesn't have the muscle control to move her head; as an adult, she would have no sexual outlet, even alone, if she did formulate sexual desires. It's likely that the things that bring her most happiness in life would end as she became an adult, and more difficult to care for.
People who assert slippery slopes have no faith in brakes. It took a panel of 18 to allow this surgery; I doubt that panel would have allowed a young developmentally disabled man to be castrated so his parents wouldn't be troubled by chronic masturbation.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
