Just Your Average, Every Day Sterilization
Northwestern's Katie Watson writes in an op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times:Vera Howse thinks her 26-year-old niece Kirsten Johnson wouldn't be a good mother, so she's asked the Cook County Probate Court for authorization to sterilize her niece against her will. Johnson is cognitively impaired, and her aunt is her legal guardian.This case has broad significance because Illinois, unlike other states, hasn't established when a court should grant a guardian authority to have a ward permanently sterilized.
Most cases like this are resolved in the doctor's office. Physicians at one Chicago hospital system estimate that it receives one to three guardian requests to sterilize their wards per month, usually from parents of disabled adolescents. After counseling, most eventually opt instead for long-term reversible birth control.
In this precedent-setting case, Riley says he's following a Pennsylvania court that adopted a "discretionary best interest standard." But his application of the specified best interest criteria is misguided and incomplete, because the standard the Pennsylvania court used is intended to focus the court on what's best for the person with a disability, and away from the best interest of the guardian, family, society or potential children.
Persons with disabilities in Illinois deserve better than this. Tubal ligation is a safe, effective form of contraception many women -- including some with cognitive deficits -- freely choose. But allowing guardians to permanently block their ward's reproductive desires with the muscle of the courts and the knife of medicine is a discriminatory step back toward a shameful era to which we should never return.
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Reminds of Oliver Wendell Holmes commentary in Buck v. Bell (1927)that "three generations of idiots is enough" -- and I thought we had come so much further since then....
- by Linda MacDonald Glenn on Aug 30, 2005 at 1:24 AM | link
I've known many families who were faced with a severely retarded daughter. One family couldn't bear caring for the child's periods. Some girls were semi-independent, but, like Rosemary Kennedy and Ms. Johnson, a little more independent in their choices that their parents could handle.
If the woman or girl is capable of expressing her refusal, surgery or even pills or shots for contraception would be assault. This looks like one of those cases.
- by on Aug 30, 2005 at 8:39 PM | link
Once, after I gave a presentation at a disability conference, some woman came up to me and confided in me that she had her daughter sterilized to "protect" her when she was institutionalized. (I have no idea why she shared this with me - I wasn't speaking about institutions or about sterilization.)
She was horrified when I told her that sterilization removed one key piece of evidence that a woman who is unable to communicate has been sexually abused - unless a sexually-transmitted disease shows up in an examination.
I really didn't understand her logic about it being "protection" - and I still don't.
- by Stephen Drake on Aug 31, 2005 at 3:31 PM | link
....but I don't understand your implication as to why she was horrified. What I find disturbing is the implication that she should not have had her daughter sterlizied so as to preserve potential forensic evidence of a sexual assault. That is a surprisingly instrumental view of fertility (and by extension, of the welfare of the institutionalized disabled) coming from a disability advocate.
Furthermore, the idea that tubal ligation, or even a complete hysterectomy somehow obscures the evidence of sexual assault absent an STD just betrays a lack of understanding of the forensics of sexual assault.
It seems to me that the mother's concern was straightforward: that her daughter would likely be sexually assaulted in an institution. The cause for the fear and desperation that led to having her daughter sterilized ought to be of greater moral concern (and empathy) than whether the decision to have her sterilized was "logical."
Have a heart, Mr. Drake.
- by Interesting anecdote.... on Sep 1, 2005 at 1:03 PM | link
Uh, whoever you are (?), you're misinterpreting my comments - I was reacting to the "protection" part of her comments. It didn't seem to make any sense and it was totally unexpected.
And - whoever you are - I'm not real big on "heart" or "compassion" - I'm much more concerned with justice and rights.
Neither of which have a great track record in institutions.
- by Stephen Drake on Sep 2, 2005 at 6:16 PM | link