After reading the link that Callaway posted about this yesterday http://ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com/blog/ I can believe that they did it because they thought it was best for their child and not because they wanted her as some kind of pet. I think that they're obviously trying very hard to give her a better quality of life. What would be the purpose of that child having to go through the pain of menstruation for instance? Especially when you consider that she can't even communicate when she is in pain.
I believe that her parents see any benefit they get from this as seconadary to the benefits their daughter will get.
This decision bothered me until I read her parents' side of the story. This decision was agreed to by an ethics committee of forty people, who did not just rubber stamp her parents' decision. One of the things they considered was if Ashley's brain could ever get better. They determined that it could not and that she would always function at the level of an infant for the rest of her life. Was there any way that Ashley could ever want to get pregnant and therefore regret the loss of her uterus?(The doctors left her ovaries.) No. The only way Ashley could ever have become pregnant was because of a rape, which sometimes happens to bedridden women with the mentality of infants in long term care facilities. Removing Ashley's breast buds was the issue that gave the ethics committee the most moral problems. They agreed to it because Ashley's mind was that of a three month old baby and she was starting precocious puberty at six years old. Large breasts ran on both sides of the family and her breasts were already becoming bothered by the straps that held her upright in her wheelchair or in her stander. Also fibrocystic breast disease ran in her family and maybe breast cancer as well. There are women who opt to have their breast tissue removed if they know they are at substantial risk of cancer or other diseases and Ashley would never be able to tell her parents about any problems with her breasts that she developed.
As for deliberately stunting Ashley's growth, unless you have ever cared for, transported, changed diapers for and given baths to full-sized adults who have the mentality of infants, you have no idea how much their size limits their world. I know a woman who has a 23 year old maybe 150 pound daughter who functions at infant level because of encephalitis caused by chicken pox she got when she was a baby. Nina is more advanced than Ashley because she learned to sit up and even walk like a one year old after years and years of physical therapy, so at least she is not bedridden, but she can't talk. She has a variety of infant toys that she can hold herself. Nina especially likes the musical ones with lights. I have not talked to Nina's mother about Ashley yet so I don't know what she thinks about it, but I do know that taking Nina out has become very difficult for her now that she can't pick her up anymore. Nina can't walk that well and diapering her in public has become a huge problem, so Nina spends most days at home and her mother pays people a small fortune to babysit Nina for a couple of hours so she can run errands and buy groceries and such. Caregivers who know how to change the diapers of adults are expensive.
I love my ten year old 70 pound daughter with all my heart and even her world has become more limited as I have gotten less able to carry her out of dangerous situations or meltdowns. I can barely pick her up anymore and I can't carry her very far when she is having a meltdown, so even though she would love to play in children's playplaces, for example, I can't carry her there alone anymore.
As for what happens to Ashley or Nina or even my daughter when her parents die, that is an issue that wakes me up at night in a cold sweat. My brothers have agreed to care for my daughter if my husband and I both die and she needs to be cared for, but of course I steadfastly hope that she won't need to be cared for by them. Nina's parents have a son who has agreed to care for Nina if they both die, but she will need to live in a long term care facility then because he would not be able to both care for her 24/7 and work at his job. They don't have very much money so they have set up a special needs trust for Nina so any money that she would have inherited from them goes into that trust rather than passing to her directly and therefore messing up her ability to get Medicaid.
