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Read other letters about this article
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.
