Imagine you have a daughter who is severely intellectually disabled.
Caring for her takes up all of your strength and your time. And as if you don’t already have enough to deal with, for about five days every month, everything gets worse. She gets her period.
She doesn’t understand what is happening. She finds the blood incredibly distressing and refuses to wear a pad. She is confused, upset and cannot deal with the situation on her own.
How is she supposed to live her life during those five days? How are you supposed to live yours? And now that she’s menstruating, what if your daughter falls pregnant? What if someone took advantage of her trusting nature and child-like innocence? Not only would this be tragic and unexplainable to her… but the baby would also become your responsibility.
If this was you – if this was your daughter – would you consider sterilisation? Should it be your right, as the parent of a minor or young woman with an intellectual disability, to order a hysterectomy and make the periods stop?
This is a question asked by thousands of parents in this situation, and next month they will have an answer.
Parents of children with disabilities could be allowed – or banned -from sterilising their children.
Top Comments
Yes I agree completely with sterilization in some cases. I have a family member who was sterilized in her pre-teen years as she was about to go into a house where she would live with several other individuals with similar difficulties and they were looked after by a rotating group of carer's. (This family member in question incidentally, LOVED living there much more than living at home). She was sterilized due to concerns about puberty and also concerns about sexual conduct. It may not be what people want to think about or realize - but intellectual and physically disabled people are really extremely vulnerable in this respect to men and women who are prepared to take advantage of them. Sterilizing this family member helped (in part at least) to let her lead a happy, fulfilling life without the added issues that would have arisen without it.
I asked about sterilisation for myself and the hospital stated that they did not do sterilisations on women without any children because many of them came back to get the procedure reversed. My situation is that I was 27 (at the time) and have congenital heart disease with stage 2 heart failure, 60% lung capacity due to pulmonary hypotension, scoliosis, and or COPD, atrial arrythmias, am on warfarin and other medications that cause birth defects. It is extremely unlikely that I will be cured of these conditions before my childbearing days are over, and a pregnancy is likely to cause a permanent drop in cardiac functioning (to stage 3 or 4 heart failure which is virtually impossible to live with let alone raise a child), more arrythmias, a stroke, or possibly death, not to mention a heart defect or stillbirth for my baby. If I am not permitted to make an informed decision about sterilisation when I am over 18 and suffering a chronic disease which would make pregnancy disastrous for myself and my child, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to get this procedure for a woman who has an intellectual disability.