Crawley reports on a case that has people debating the ethics of raising a disabled child:

Disability charities are extremely worried by the legal precedent that could be set by the case of the 15-year-old Katie Thorpe. Katie’s mother, Alison Thorpe, has asked doctors to give her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, a hysterectomy to prevent her from starting menstruation because she is concerned that Katie would be confused by periods and they would cause her indignity.

Simone Apsis of the UK Disabled People’s Council joined William to say how concerned she is about the hysterectomy being allowed to go ahead.

I think it’s entirely up to the mother. She’s the one – nobody else – who will have to deal with this child in this state for a long, long time. Frankly, it’s nobody else’s damned business, and if the UK government won’t get out of her face about her decision then I’d take the daughter elsewhere to have it done. A spastic woman is no more likely to be able to be a successful parent than the busybodies are likely to raise a spastic woman: whatever makes life simpler for both mother and daughter is at this stage of primary importance, precedence or no. I’m astonished that such a collectivist notion as precedence should take precedence over what’s important to the individuals involved. They’ve got enough on their plate without having to take all future generations of cerebral palsy sufferers and their families into account of their own private dilemma, which is theirs and theirs alone. Unless Simone Apsis wishes to be responsible for raising Katie Thorpe herself then she has no say in how the girl’s mother wishes to do it.

What say ye?