That’s the questions being asked during a Senate Inquiry into involuntary or coerced sterilisation of people with disabilities. The inquiry will look why steralisation is considered by others for people with disabilities and what effect sterilisation has on those people.
The following letter was anonymously submitted to the inquiry by a mother with a 27-year-old intellectually disabled daughter. Four years ago she had her daughter fitted with a Mirena, which is a long-term contraceptive.
This is why:
I have a twenty-seven year old intellectually disabled daughter, who is now living independently in the community.
Something I thought was not possible has happened. My daughter is in a unit out in the community and has developed a life of independence, yet still within a bubble of support. It is through this network of support that she survives in this world – it is a group of people who have put their hands up to say we will accept responsibility for this person in our community.
So my daughter’s bills are paid, she has food and can clean her clothes (although now I acknowledge there are many new shades of white). She has a carer come in to help, mainly to touch base, see if she has problems that might need addressing.
It is a responsibility we have taken on, just on the chance that maybe all the unhappiness she was experiencing was because she needed independence just like normal people her age. Well it has paid off. This 27 yr old woman has developed a life for herself beyond any that I could have dreamed for her. Instead of wandering from room to room staring out the window, she now has a life. She is experiencing what other people experience, and in doing so is thinking more and being challenged towards growth. Part of that growth has included the acquisition of a boyfriend.
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My fiance was born to parents consisting of an alcoholic father, and a mother who was left physically and mentally disabled through a car accident as a young teen. Doctors have put her mental age at around 9 years old.
While I am grateful that my fiance is in my life, I believe that they should not have had a child. Why?
My Father in Law met my Mother in Law at a local pub, the very next day, my MIL turned up on my FIL's mothers doorstep, where he had been living for his entire 30 years. 5 months later, FIL had knocked 20 year old MIL up and he moved in with her.
Both MIL and FIL are passive-aggressive, childish, selfish, controlling and entitled. All of this has been projected onto my fiance through-out the duration of his life. They expect my fiance to be their only source of entertainment, because they have no one else. They constantly attempt to contact him, feigning inability so that their son will feel obliged to help them, and if he somehow cannot, they put him on the biggest guilt trip.
My MIL cannot look after herself, let alone a child. I know this because she could not put her own child in or out of his cot without assistance, could not bathe him or change his nappies (his father worked full time and has told me he would come home every day to find his son with feces dripping down his legs) His mother would secretly keep him home from school, thinking if he used the school toilets, he would "catch AIDS". They didn't even keep any food in the house, except for what they would eat for dinner - the same thing, over and over and over. In childhood pictures, it is easy to see how malnourished he was.
When he was finally attending school on a regular basis, he would be constantly sick and dragged into a coffee shop that MIL frequented daily, not staying at home to rest. He was not allowed to have any friends, to play any sports, or be anywhere without his parents - up until he met me. And even then it was the fight of our lives.
Was this any life for a child? Definitely not. I am so angry, that no one stepped in and prevented this child abuse that has harmed my fiance well into his adulthood.
My sister had Downs Syndrome and also was Autistic. The combination of the two syndromes was profound. On the Downs Syndrome scale she was very low functioning. For example, incontinent as an adult, unable to speak or say words - only sounds - and never grew over 4 ft 5" tall. She was unable to make eye contact - and had the repititous behaviours sympotmatic of severe autism too. She too, was put into the community to live in a community home in order to try and let her live some type of normal life - there was a live in carer and 11 others in the house. Some how she became pregnant - and later miscarried. But the incident was so traumatic for her - and those in the house and for the carer - let alone my parents - that they made the easy decision to have her sterilisied. The horror for us all - was that we had no idea whether she may have been raped ...we cannot imagine it would have been consensual. Ultimately, my parents removed her from the communal house - and at an incredible cost to them personally from a financial perspective, the Catholic Church stepped in and enable her to live in a convent cared for by nuns until her death 10 years ago from the flu. (yep, she got the flu and it travelled to her heart and she died of a heart attack). My message here reflects most of the sentiments of the comments below - that is: Amber is right - my parents were right - and I think their decision to spare my sister the confusion and terror that plagued her not only about her menstruation - but also the unforseen pregnancy - then sterilisation was and is a very great comfort. I stress to state that my parents removed my sister from the situation - and the whole debate about abusers is another topic - but on the message of sterilization of severly mentally impaired - is one that should be the responsbility of the carers.