The Ashley Treatment
I remember when this story first broke back in early January. I was listening to the BBC some time after midnight, which is the only time that you can catch it on the radio here, and only on NPR, at that. I was experiencing my usual bout of insomnia when this incredible story came on about a couple in Seattle who had a daughter with severe disabilities, who, though she was nine years old, had the mental age of a three month old due to an unknown form of brain damage. The parents, under the guise of making it easier to care for Ashley, their daughter, had her uterus and breast buds removed, as well as her appendix, and if that wasn’t enough, had her pumped full of estrogen in order to stunt her growth! And guess what? This was done to her when she was six years old! The estrogen treatments are ongoing.
Her parents refer to this sickening series of alterations and experimentation as the Ashley Treatment, and recommend other parents of children with severe brain damage to do the same thing to their kids.
As I listened to this, I couldn’t help thinking: no, this can’t be true. This is a joke, right? How can parents who love their child do this? Ashley’s parents say that they did it to make life more comfortable for Ashley, and to make it easier to care for her. They did not want her to be a target for sexual predetors, so they had her breast buds removed. They also said that large breasts ran in their family, as did breast cancer, so they did not want Ashley to have to deal with the discomfort of large breasts, or the risk of breast cancer. Ashley was given a hysterectomy so that she would not have to undergo menstruation. Her appendix was removed just in case it ruptured, and she was and is given estrogen to stunt her growth in order to make her more portable. They said that the decision to do what they did was not hard at all.
The parents call Ashley their Pillow Angel because if placed on a pillow, she remains there. Ashley cannot move or speak, but she is a gorgeous little girl with a beautiful smile, and the prettiest eyes. I cannot believe that parents would do this. As far as I am concerned, the reasons that they gave are a crock. They, along with the grandparents are the only ones who care for Ashley, so what sexual predetors are they protecting her from? Sure, breast cancer may run in her family, but that doesn’t mean that she will have it in the future. As for the discomfort of menstruation, well, what do you think Tylenol, and a heating pad are for? And, too much estrogen is bound to cause major problems. If Ashley got too big for her parents to lift, well, that’s what attendant services and Hoyer lifts are for
Face it — the only reason that Ashley’s parents did this to her was to make life easier for them. The horrors visited on Ashley would not have happened if she were not a child with disabilities, and a girl. If what had been done to Ashley was done to a non-disabled child, the parents would be in jail as we speak. Indeed, they would have been stopped before the first surgery!
I wonder what this slippery slope is leading to? If this can be sanctioned for children with severe disabilities, where does one draw the line? It was not very long ago that people with disabilities were euthanized, or placed in institutions against the will of their families. The Ashley Treatment speaks to the fact that the life of a person with a disability is still not as worthy or as sacred as the life of a non-disabled person, and though we are living in the 21st century, we, as activists, advocates, and parents who love our children, must maintain a strict vigilance and speak out against this injustice, lest we find ourselves repeating history.