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• Friday, February 9, 2007 04:17 PM

  Get Real

  I can't believe that ANY of the posters here object to the surgery and the decision of the ethics committee. We should applaud these parents for taking care of this profoundly disabled child in their home. (Rather than institutionalizing her, or killing her, as I'd guess many parents in history have done in similar cases.)

  So they creepily call her "Pillow Angel." So what? How hard must it be to take of this girl, day in, day out, knowing that she will age and never improve, that she will need your care and attention constantly for the rest of your life, and that probably you will die before her, not being able to make sure she will be taken care of properly and lovingly after your death? If under that psychic stress the only quirk you develop is calling your daughter Pillow Angel, you're lucky.

  Doctors & other posters who are talking about her personhood, independence, right to sexual pleasure, etc., are the skewed ones. Ashley's brain is at the developmental level of a 3-month-old's! She can't sit up! COME ON.

  Disabled people are not one homogenous group, to be treated identically. And amen to the others who have bashed the "slippery slope" argument--that's exactly why we have ethics committees. This treatment would never be approved for a girl with, say, Down's syndrome. Worrying about the slippery slope, and thus denying this surgery, would only make this individual family's already unbelievably difficult life even more so.

  Give this family a break. If you really care, why not volunteer to babysit Ashley for a week so her parents can actually have a break?

  —Jay
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