Take my ovaries – please!

Your blogstress agrees most heartily in principle with The Nation’s Patricia J. Williams and Brother Ben Adler, your Webwench’s colleague on TAPPED, that the parents of a nine-year-old with the brain of three-month-old should not have to choose between institutionalizing her or subjecting her to a hysterectomy. However, there’s one bit of Williams’ argument your écrivaine finds a bit faulty, and it’s quoted by Brother Ben in this TAPPED post:

“Who of us, with full capacity to consent, would undergo the painful invasiveness of a full hysterectomy just to prevent cramps or as a prophylactic against rape's violations? Why then should it be permitted in the case of someone who has no capacity to protest?”

The answer to this question clearly depends on one’s perspective, and it’s one, I think, that an adult woman with full capacity to consent should be permitted to decide on her own, but she is not.

Your cybertrix, you see, would have gladly undergone a full hysterectomy for the sake of eliminating truly debilitating menstrual pain (“cramps,” they’re really not), but no reputable gynecologist could your blogstress find to perform the procedure. “What if you should want to have a baby someday?” the doctors asked. “ What if you should change your mind?” I wouldn’t, I assured them, but I was deemed to be incapable of knowing my own mind, presumably because any woman capable of having children should want to be having them.

For your ’net-tête, her only regret in the reproductive realm are the many weeks of needless pain that impeded her productivity, thanks to the prejudices of the medical establishment.