Your opinion on the 'Ashley treatment'?

[crashdoll]

This article is about a teenage girl in America with severe disabilities. Her parents put her through a lot of treatment to prevent her going through puberty. To some extent, I can understand their motives but removing her breast buds and putting her through a hysterectomy? That sounds sound too far to me.

Sorry it's the DM.

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2115904/Ashley-treatment-Should-parents-stop-disabled-children-growing-up.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Treatment

It feels fundamentally and morally wrong but haven't thought through why I feel that way as yet and as I have no experience of parenting a child with severe disabilities I don't want to jump in and judge too heavily. But urgh, it really doesn't sit right with me.

Bloody hell.
Aibu? Really? Aibu seems the best place for this to you.

I never ever tell people where to post but good grief.

Sorry. I didn't think. I will asked for this to be moved.

It's impossible for us to know whether they did the right thing or not, for many reasons. One being that we can never be sure how puberty would have affected Ashley.

As parents we all try to do what's best for our children, even when others might disagree, and I think these parents are exactly the same. It's very sad that the parents feel the best for their child was extensive surgery, but I would think that they have good reasons for doing what they did. They shouldn't be judged IMO.

there was a long thread on mn about this before.
as the parent of a disabled child, i found it sickening

I just wanted to apologise for a.) posting it here (have asked for it be moved) and b.) for not knowing there was a thread before.

agree with 2shoes

I don't think you should feel you have to apologise. It's a valid discussion topic, and I haven't seen it before either.

It's ok crashdoll. I was just a bit shocked. Hopefully mn will move it.

I hope so HQ will be along soon. I made an error in judgement. I know these things are emotive.

A regular depot injection would stop her periods. A hysterectomy is going too far. The parents must be unable to accept that she's an adult.

I don't judge the parents, but I do judge the doctors that performed the operations.

crashdo;; the thread was years ago, I only remember it as i found it so sickening(this abuse of disabled children, not the thread)

Oh my God, how truly horrifying.

Interesting to hear it likened to abuse.

a needles operation.....what else would you call it, the child had no choice.

it smacks of eugenics, where the undesirable were sterilised. Even those with very profound learning impairments have rights and feelings and being a parent does not make you god

I can understand the parents of a severely disabled child not wanting to to have periods. She wouldn't understand them, wouldn't "need" them and MIT be distressed by them.

I would have thought a contraceptive injection would have the same effect.

But, this is mainly happening in America, where they are now getting very strange about contraception (Rush Limbugh etc)

Might not MIT. Don't know what happened there.

I'm not saying its not abuse, it may well be, it's just that's not the first thing that came to mind. If my child would benefit from an operation I wouldn't let him have a choice, but I wouldn't expect that to be called abuse.

Maybe I'm being nieve, but I just wouldn't have thought that these parents would do that if they didn't genuinely believe there was a benefit. Same as the doctors I guess.

I have nursed younger disabled people and I think they should be afforded the dignity and respect that the rest of us demand. Keeping someone in a child like state does smack of eugenics and sounds highly unethical to me. There are ways of dealing with and coping with an adult disabled person that doesn't compromise their dignity. I think this is all about the parents tbh

Being a parent of a disabled child doesnt always mean you understand disability. You're not a disabled person. I think a needless operation is abuse. And they stopped her growth for their convenience.
here is the story told by a woman with severe physical impairments who was assumed to have no inetllectual ability. So she was starved into small stature. Doctors and parent made the assumption that no speech = no rights.

Is this a very old story? I remember reading something similar years ago where the parents/doctors were basically trying to keep her as a child - small, no periods or breasts... For 'her own good'.