More writing on Ashley X

As people incorporate the Ashley Treatment into their thinking about disability or just spend a little time with the ethics of it all, more continues to be written about the case and the precedent it creates:

Patricia Williams for The Nation, posted at AlterNet:

This was also very wrong as a matter of ethics and public policy. There seems to be, in the national debate about this case, a popular consensus that the parents were well motivated, so who are the rest of us to judge? That sentiment is expressed loftily, as in Peter Singer's New York Times op-ed ("she is precious not so much for what she is, but because her parents and siblings love her and care about her"), and crudely, as in an anonymous online posting to the disability rights organization FRIDA ("I think your group is a pain in the neck ... if and when something happens to the caregiver, who will take care of the disabled person ... your group or the state who really does not give a hoot.")

Dave Reynolds at Inclusion Daily Express asks the question "Should 'Ashley X' be at the Center of Community Living Debate?":

Frankly, however, I haven't been able to make that link between community supports and Ashley's parents. I don't think one has much to do with the other.

For one thing, I found nothing in statements by Ashley's parents to suggest that an increase in community supports would have kept them from surgically changing their daughter to fit what they wanted her to be, an eternal "Pillow Angel". To the contrary, they said that they had tried in-home services but were not happy with them. Not that their satisfaction with the services would have mattered; even if they had the best in-home supports for Ashley, they still would have chosen their radical procedure.

"We would never turn the care of Ashley over to strangers even if she had grown tall and heavy," they wrote.

And because we knew this would never be just about Ashley X, Today's Zaman, a Turkish news site reports:

Two families with children suffering from cerebral palsy voiced support on Friday for another family’s plea to stunt the growth of their son, 13-year-old Umut Mert, who suffers from the same disorder. Füsun Evren, Umut Mert’s mother, earlier this week announced she was looking for a doctor who would stunt her son’s growth, in an operation now referred to as “Ashley’s treatment,” so named after a 9-year-old Seattle girl whose parents opted to stunt her growth with high-dose estrogen.

.... Professor Saim Yeprem from the Religious Affairs Directorate said that Ashley’s treatment was unacceptable. Yeprem said: “Umut Mert would be castrated if he received Ashley’s treatment. Castration is opposed by all religions, not only Islam.”

Dr. Güler Saygun from the Turkish Disabled Persons Administration said that applying such a treatment would require approval from the Ministry of Health’s Ethics Council. The head of the Turkish Association for the Disabled, Zülfikar Akar, said: “We don’t think it’s the right choice, but the mother’s situation is indeed difficult. These situations happen because care centers don’t offer long-term care for people with disabilities.”