yet another parent has asked doctors to electively amputate a part of their disabled child.

although the medical board has turned her down, it astounds me that she found a consultant who agreed to carry out the operation in the first place.

i’ve said a lot about this before in commenting on the ashley case. i really can’t put into words just how deeply this saddens and sickens me – the idea that we should be medically manipulating disabled people’s bodies to fit our own needs is like something out of a horror movie.

not only is it incredibly disturbing that we think it’s okay to perform operations on people who lack the capacity to consent simply to make things “easier”, but it’s even more unnerving that as a society we seem to think that a lack of capacity to consent is the same thing as a lack of rights.

we simply do *not* have the right to take people’s reproductive organs away simply because we think they’re too “messy” and they’ll never use them. if it’s not something we would consider for a 15 year old of average intelligence, it should not be something we consider for someone with a learning disability.

i’m not speaking from some kind of ivory tower here – i’ve changed the menstrual pads of many women with learning disabilities. i have washed them, dressed them, lifted them into and out of wheelchairs and on and off of toilets. and to those who say periods cause a “indignity” to disabled people who can’t care for themselves, i say this:

you only lose your dignity when people stop treating you with any.

you don’t get allocated any fewer rights the lower your i.q. score….but it would seem you get fewer people willing to stand up for them.

the new pornographers – my rights versus yours

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