The Most Horrifying Story I've Read In a Long Time

Have you heard about the girl in Washington state that will no longer age normally?
You can read about it here and the standard opinion of the operation here.

I've found this story so horrifying that I can't quite wrap my head around it. It seems so wrong at a visceral level and yet so many people seem to think it's fine, it really reminds me of the abortion debate in many ways. The arguments are pretty much the same, who are you to judge, it's a difficult decision therefore any choice is a good one, have I parented any mentally handicapped children, etc. Basically since a large number of people have thrown out the tools needed make moral judgments they resort to not making moral judgments, except against me.

Just in case you were curious, Ed Peters sums up my thoughts rather nicely. Ashley's treatment is a case of mutilation. Just because she wasn't going to use the organs that would have developed at all or in the same way she would have if she wasn't brain damaged doesn't mean you remove them. We don't follow up final vows with surgeries, medicine has a purpose, to heal. Nothing the doctors did to Ashley could be described as healing.

Comments

[Matt]

This story really hits you twice. First is the abject horror of the surgery and rationale of the parents and "ethics" board. But second, and even more tragic, is the general acceptance of it along with the "how-dare-you-judge-them" mentality. It *IS* the abortion debate. The clear absence of logically sound reasoning, and incredibly decadent moral relativism that all revolves around secular society's "me" culture is the underlying cause of both. It is amazing how cut-and-paste people’s comments are with respect to abortion—change the subject from “disabled girl” to “fetus” and modify the oh-so-irrelevant-social-concerns to apply to unwanted pregnancy and it is the same. There was a time in this country when every doctor on that hospital “ethics” board would have had their license revoked for allowing such a horrific surgery to take place—but sadly our secular moral decay has ruled that anything that is in the best interest of “ME” has superiority over anything else.

[PeterTerp]

I say why stop at her sexual organs? The parents (who incidentally said this was NOT a difficult decision because the answer was so obvious to them) have argued that it will be easier to care for a smaller body and that puberty would only increase her chance for bedsores. Don't her arms and her legs increase her chance for bed sores too? Why bother keeping them? She'll never do anything worthwhile with them, and they are just getting in the way flopping around like that.
And, of course, the age old question of where do you draw the line crops up. Maybe we should make everyone take a maturity test before they hit puberty...and those who don't pass, off with their organs! It would certainly cut down on unwanted pregnancies.
I also think it's worth noting how this "procedure" highlights out culture's current priviledging of the mind over the body (can you read ancient heresy strikes again?). Because the mind will never function properly, the body must be forced to also share in its dysfunction. What would happen if we reversed this logic? Maybe we should start administering hormones to all the little people so that there minds never mature beyond the size of their bodies.