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This article is welcome and relevant, as evidenced by the number of thoughtful and compassionate letters posted here.
Ashley and her family frighten and challenge us because they don't fit into any convenient one-size-fits-all notion of right and wrong. And they teach us, by implication, that there are few ethical universal principles that apply regardless of context.
In the face of such a dilemma, the demand of our humanity is that we must stop to think it through, to feel it through, and to learn what our ability to love and empathize is trying to convey.
We have to consider facts: anyone who has caught children "playing doctor" knows that sexual feelings are present before puberty. How do we feel about this, and the merits of sexual pleasure?
Menstruation connects mature women to many other phases, rhythms and cycles of our natural world, and is significant beyond reproduction and inconvenience. Perhaps this connection is not important to Ashley, but her situation makes us pause to consider the question.
I care professionally for mentally disabled adults whose sexuality comes in more permutations than most people think about. I consider myself an advocate for their rights. Yet if I am honest, and I daresay other professionals would admit the same, I confess to having fervently wished they, society, and caregivers could be spared the confusion and the often disastrous consequences of their sexual urges. And I am ethically troubled by having that wish.
These, and a myriad of other questions will cross through our minds as we consider Ashley and her family. The process may be more important, in the long run, than the conclusions. Through their brave anguish, Ashley, her family and her doctors jar us out of comfortable assumptions which would never have sufficed in this very real world.
