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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
What if the parents wanted to have her put to death? How much different is that than radical surgery? It would certainly take care of the risk of molestation the parents seem to be oddly concerned about. If we don't recognize Ashley's right to develop naturally, than why not? It is common to put pets to sleep. Ashely clearly does not enjoy the same rights as you and I. She is subhuman, based on the actions taken against her. No matter how you slice it, the course of action taken in this case is wrong.
Buttle brings up another option not mentioned yet, why not put her to sleep? Euthanasia could be considered in rare cases, probably not for someone as high functioning as Ashley though(not being sarcastic regarding functioning).
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.
I don't think Ahsley's parents are these noble people selflessly devoting their lives to their little "Pillow Angel". I just think they are people who want her alive for themselves.
We are talking about someone with the brain capacity of 3 month old. It sorta of reminds me of the Terri Shiavo(sp?) event. You have parents who seem to want to keep basically a blob alive for themselves without any sort of function or purpose because she's a "person". A "person" who less thinking ability than my dog or if you want to get more advanced, our closest cousin, the gorilla. Now depending on your religious affliations, what constitutes a "person" is up for debate.
To me, Ashley is not a person. She has no traits to which I would classify as human other than having the body. So why not let the parents turn her into a real live baby doll? They want her alive but they don't want her as an adult. So what? She has no function other than to exist for them. If you take away believing in a "soul", how much human was ever in that kid in the first place?
Oh, how painful to read the empathy for these parents whom, yes, are obviously demented. Yes, the name they gave this child, pillow angel, is creepy.
What the parents did to Ashley was not for her comfort and well-being. They did it for their own comfort and well-being.
They did not do this on a whim. They carefully considered it, and it had to be approved, before it was done. Caring for a severly mentally disabled person is so grueling, and, with advances in modern medicine, they are living longer. I wonder about the endurance of and strain on parents in their 60s and 70s trying to change the diapers of a 200-lb. adult having a tantrum.
When this story first broke, I remembered the state instution for the mentally retarted in my home town. Mainstreaming was still a new concept when I was young, and some of the residents at the "training school" came to our schools for classes. They were classified as "Trainable Mentally Retarted" and were taught in separate classes, but rode the bus and went to lunch and the library with the rest of us. My brother worked at the training school when he finished high school. He now does home construction and says that working in the training school was more physically demanding than construction. The stress of the job drove him out in less than six months.
The residents aren't all shiny-clean Corkys from "Life Goes On," or "angels," teaching the world about love and kindness and all the other sentimental twaddle you often hear about the mentally disabled. The worst cases are wheelchair-bound, have to wear helmets to protect them from splitting their own skulls open by falling or banging their heads repeatedly against the wall, and are grossly overweight from being unable to move much. They have no control over their bodies and impulses - they will fling the contents of their filled diapers, hit with the power of a prizefighter, masturbate whenever and wherever they feel like it, and sexually grope employees and other patients. My brother would come home emotionally drained, and often black-and-blue from patients assaulting him as he lifted them into the tub or into bed. He would be spit on, vomited on, his nuts would be grabbed, he'd have to clean up the results of a warp core breach in the diapers - all in a day's work.
My mother has been friends with a woman for more than 40 years, we call her Aunt Daisy. Aunt Daisy's eldest son Mark went to Vietnam - and took a bullet in his neck. He survived, but has spent the last 30-plus years in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down, unable to move on his own or speak. Aunt Daisy and Uncle Bob have spent their lives caring for him, and lost their Golden Years when they should have been enjoying their children and grandchildren. Uncle Bob is now dying of cancer, and Mark will probably outlive them both. Aunt Daisy and Uncle Bob can leave nothing to their other two children when they die - everything they have left is going into a trust fund for Mark's care.
At least some of that is in the future for Ashley's parents. And they won't be healthy, athletic 18-year-olds like my brother was. They'll be middle-aged going into elderly, bodies and spirits worn down by the previous years of caring for Ashley. I can understand why they've made this choice. The ethics will be debated for a while, but I won't demonize them for making a hard choice in hard circumstances.
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
