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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Sometimes there is no right answer.
Sunspot, I was the first poster. I do feel she was made more convenient by the surgery, I also do not judge her parents, and I also do not declare that I think her life would necessarily be better without the surgery. I don't know. I think the culture has failed the family, as it fails all families who face these burdens alone or with institutional rather than neighborly support. Take 12 households and set up shifts...we all take care of each other, we have amazing extended families and rich relationships, learn immense and meaningful lessons about our spirituality, etc. Utopia, I know. But Utopia is where most moral assumptions reside. It's worth upholding. Slippery slopes are worth noting, and seeing one case without the broader context can make us myopic to what we're becoming. We use technology instead of community.
As to Ashley's periods, I'm baffled by that one. Seems to me that simply tracking them on a calendar and giving her pain Rx on schedule would eliminate that problem.
I like it that you raised the parallel questions. I agree with you they're all intertwined. All of a piece. It's all about compassion (as the Ashley Treatment may represent in one way...but in another, not). It's paradox, and that's why it was a dangerous, difficult decision.
I wonder about the morality of precedent setting, too.
I think circumcision should be banned.
I think what we do to pigs is morally reprehensible. No bacon here.
I have a friend with a cat. The cat has been neutered. The cat has been declawed. These procedures are not considered to cause long-term pain, only the discomfort associated with healing. So long as my friend takes good care of his cat, there should be no occasion where claws are needed for defense in an attack. These procedures allow my friend greater ease in caring for the cat. He does not need to worry about the cat spraying while in heat. He does not need to worry about the cat scratching up the curtains or his leg. The cat appears to miss neither his claws nor his testicles.
Ashley's level of dependence on her parents are probably greater than the cat's dependence on his owner. As much right as a pet owner has to ask a vet to perform unnecessary procedures on an animal, so, too, do Ashley's parents have to ask a doctor to neuter their daughter. Ashley will likely appear to miss neither her breasts nor her womb.
I apologize; this is off topic in a serious discussion about something important. But in response to the previous poster: de-clawing cats is a questionable practice; it's considered inhumane and illegal or restricted in much of Europe and some other countries; it has lasting negative consequences for the cat. It is a procedure that is done soley for the convenience of the owners.
It should be much more rare than it is.
Sorry for the interruption.
I know everything will not be caught, but this should be a top priority. Since anyone/thing can now be kept alive almost forever by spending enough money and since euthanasia is problematic there hopefully will be some limit to this or the entire world will be a nursing home.
"What they did to this child takes away her personhood. She's a human being and with that comes all the same rights as you or I have to experience normal development and sexual pleasure."
She is, to herself, a three-month-old person. 20 years from now, with loving care, she will still be, to herself, a three-month-old person. Rights or not, how can she experience normal development or sexual pleasure?
And what on earth does "personhood?" mean? Definition, please, of this abstract 'right'.
She is only 3 months old, mentally, and therefore can only think with the mind of a 3 month old. It were as if she were only the age of three months! If you were to count her age developmentally on a calendar, it would add to not one or two, but 3 MONTHS. So, you see, she can only have the intellect of a 3-month old.
...but giving her a hysterectomy and removing her breasts will NOT protect this little girl from sexual assault. Prepubescent children are (unfortunately) raped all the time. The problem is with the person who would rape anyone, let alone a physically helpless girl or woman with the mind of a baby, NOT with that girl or woman's secondary sex characteristics.
Removing her breasts and uterus will not necessarily prevent her from having sexual feelings or arousal either. Prepubescent children are quite capable of orgasm. So are woman who have had hysterectomies and masectomies.
It being an obvious factor.
All the "objections" are firmly grounded in "religious ideals" re: what makes a human being, however they are disguised by thick rationalizations to make it all seem so "purely scientific" as well as in the "interest of the child."
The objections all say in essense "do we have a right to make this decision for another human being."
Those that object do so, because their instinctual feeling re: humans is we are "special." Our body almost sacred, and the way it came is the way it should be without being altered except out of medical necessity.
This "feeling" is hardly scientific, especially since the bulk of their reservations rest on the "sanctity of the intact human body."
Ironically, science has been teaching us that what makes us "human, more than just an animal" is our mind.
Without our "mind" we are little more than flesh. A functioning heart, lungs, liver Etc. canNOT make us human. ONLY OUR MIND does that.
Yet the distance between the true source of their objections and their rational thinking mind is so great, few would recognize their gross rationalizations for what they are, an attempt to impose the religious (any all religions) sense of what is "human" over the scientific sense of what is human (the FUNCTIONING mind in a human body.)
So instinctive is the feeling, that they miss the fact that humans with normal mental ability make the decision to alter their bodies every day. Women with large breasts get reductions. As medicine advances the kinds of changes will get more dramatic, and we'll mak them willingly.
In this young girl's case, her infirmed nature prevents her from making any rationale decision. She is aware of the world like a 3 yr. old, but mentally is probably less capable than that for a 3yr. old's behavior is a result of a growing, properly functioning brain, which this girl does not have.
So her parents have decided for her, and their choice is reasonable, rational and fair to all.
They clearly refused to put on the blinders so many of this nation's elite do in regard to the state of healthcare, nursing care and the variety of "social services" this girl would have to depend on IF her body had been allowed to develop into an adult body, while her mind was left behind at 3months.
They know they do not have the luxury of pretending that our social services network is ready, willing and wants to take care of a child like theirs. They insist on taking into account her likely fate if forced to give her up because she became impossible to take care of at home.
I commend the parents for making this decision. They sound incredibly compassionate, loving, determined and brave.
If this girl had been normal, she'd would have had a fantastic life.
As it is, these wonderful people are ensuring she has the best life she can, unhindered by a physical form that would make it impossible for them to keep her in her later years.
And yes while unspoken, i think the inference is clear. If the hospital did NOT do this, then in a few years, the little girl was going to be the responsibility of the state, not theirs.
So not only did they do the best for the child, themselves but also this country's overwhelmed social service system.
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
