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I think one thing that may have driven her parents to make this request was that our culture does not function well as a community. Ever since the birth of the burbs our collective imaginations have failed to create adequate solutions to families in dire need of support. Making this disabled person surgically more convenient is a horrifying but logical result.
One parallel piece of evidence that the culture craves community but confuses it with things is the altruism-as-sensation show Extreme Makeover, Home Edition. The frantic cheers of volunteers as the recipients are given an extravagant home speaks to both that confusion and that unmet craving, I believe.
If we created a network of caring in every neighborhood so that no nuclear family had to care for a severely disabled child (or for that matter, any child or elder) either in isolation or with only institutional help, such interventions would not even be imagined.
It would still be sad and hard, that some among us are completely dependent, but it wouldn't break the back of a family or the conscience of healers. The baseline position is that there were no other options, and that is a true social failure.
