From the Chicago Tribune:
Disability rights advocates and medical ethicists praised a precedent-setting
ruling Friday by the Illinois Appellate Court denying a bid to sterilize a
mentally disabled woman against her will......"Tubal ligation is a particularly drastic means of preventing a mentally
incompetent ward from becoming pregnant," Judge Joseph Gordon wrote in the
36-page opinion. There are "less intrusive and less psychologically harmful
[birth-control] alternatives."......"It's extraordinarily significant" because it guarantees the disabled a
court hearing, said Katie Watson, aNorthwestern University professor who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of about two dozen medical ethicists."
"In the past, this was a decision that could be made between a guardian and a
doctor," she said. "The decision must be moved into the light."The ruling means a guardian must go through some "significant legal hoops"
before a court will order sterilization, said the woman's attorney, John
Whitcomb of Equip for Equality, a disability rights group.
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