Stunted Growth: Right or Wrong?

When you become a parent, you take on a huge responsibility for rest of your life. If your child is handicapped then you enter a whole new ballgame. We should admire the parents that take care of their handicapped children within their home. However, the decision of a local Chicago couple to stunt the growth of their handicapped daughter is raising ethics questions nationwide. The nation has started to debate this over the Internet since it's news release. It raises the question of did they do this for themselves or for her benefit? What do you think?

Ashley (or as her parents call her "pillow angel") is a 9 year old severely mentally and physically handicapped girl. Her parents care for her at home, though she does attend a school for disabled children. Ashley cannot sit up, roll over, hold anything, or talk. She is also bedridden. Her parents decided that they should investigate stunting her growth to keep her at a more manageable size so that they could keep caring for her at home. They say that keeping her at her small current size ( which is 4-foot-5) makes it easier to include her in the typical family activities, which give her needed comfort and security. Her small size also will reduce her the risk of bedsores and other conditions that typically affect bedridden patients. In the parents opinion, keeping her their "pillow angel" size will make them able to care for her at home for a longer period of time.

In July of 2004, Ashley's parents had her uterus and breast tissue removed and she just recently completed the hormone treatment. By removing her uterus and breast tissue, they are preventing her from going through puberty and experiencing her menstrual cycle and growing breasts. Breast cancer runs in their family ,so they wanted to eliminate the discomfort and chance of developing the cancer and the discomfort of growing breasts.

Will this start a trend of stunting children's growth for convenience? How handicapped must a child be to be eligible? All of these questions should be answered by the medical community before more parents come forward wanting to stunt their children's growth.