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It's a Curse but is it Really That Bad?

I'm not sure my eyes are working properly. Can it really be that a British mom wants to give her severely disabled 15 year old daughter a hysterectomy to "save her the pain and discomfort of menstruation"? One can only imagine how difficult caring for such a disabled child must be but major surgery to avoid four or five days each month?

The mom defends her decision (which is far from settled) saying,

"Katie wouldn't understand menstruation at all. She has no comprehension about what will be happening to her body. All she would feel is the discomfort, the stomach cramps and the headaches, the mood swings, the tears, and wonder what is going on."

If Katie doesn't understand menstruation, I doubt she understands defecation, the flu she's probably gotten lots of in sunny old England or the conversations going on around her either. I know this sounds cruel and cavalier but there seems a big difference between this case and the "pillow angel" case from earlier this year. In that case, the brain damaged child was immobile; having her reach full growth would certainly have made it much harder for her parents to include her in activities, especially outside the home. I don't know what the right answer was, but choosing to stunt her growth can certainly be seen as the best of only bad options. That one didn't seem nearly as disturbing as this one where they have the option of just dealing with her periods along with the myriad other issues already burdening them.

Given the mother's word choice, Katie hasn't begun to menstruate yet; why not at least wait to see if she has easy periods or the kind that send women round the bend?

Posted by Debra Dickerson on 10/08/07 at 3:08 PM | Comments (2) | Email | Print

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