Assuming that you’re a girl, how would you feel if your mom asked you if she could hire a doctor who would in turn remove your uterus – thus removing the chance of you ever having children? No, it’s not being done by the mother because her daughter is some village whore. You see, Alison Thorpe from the United Kingdom has recently found herself in a legal firestorm after requesting to have her daughter Katie’s womb removed.
Katie is severely disabled. She is suffering from a debilitating condition called cerebral palsy that makes the girl challenging in terms of interacting with her environment and general activities of day to day life. Since Katie is now a teen, she has been experiencing bad episodes of dysmenorrhea during her monthly period and since its very unlikely that a physically and mentally disabled girl like Katie would ever grasp the idea of having children, her mother found it just to ask for her uterus to be removed to spare the growing girl of the inconvenience of menstruation. Because of the mental shortcomings of Katie, she may not be able have the proper coping mechanisms to deal with the pain and discomfort of her menstrual cycle and this might actually further depress her already low quality of life.
A human rights group has been blocking the move saying that letting the mother make the calls on her daughter’s elective surgery. The disability charity group Scope says that it would set a dangerous precedent wherein disabled girls all over Britain and perhaps the world could be subject to forced sterilization.
The mother claims that despite the initial pain and risk that the operation entails, the girl would still be more benefited in the long run. Katie is unable to communicate so the intake of painkillers may not be as expedient as the mother would want.