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08 November 2007 / Julian Samiloff
Issue: 7296 / Categories: Opinion , Practice areas
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Whose choice?

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Should patients who can’t consent be subjected to non-essential surgery? asks Julian Samiloff

A mother who asked doctors to give her 15-year-old daughter (K), who has severe cerebral palsy, a hysterectomy has raised again the ethical and legal dilemma about how the law ought to balance the human rights of people who, because of mental disability, do not have the capacity to consent to the medical treatment being proposed.

Although the operation is not in the young woman’s physical best interests, her mother argues that the medical intervention is in the best interests of K because, she says, K will not be able to cope with the onset of adulthood and the “pain, discomfort and indignity” of menstruation. K “has an undignified enough life without the added indignity of menstruation. She will not understand what is happening to her body and it could be very frightening for her”. She “would be totally confused by menstruation. She could not manage it by herself. She could not keep it discreet; she can not be private”. K’s doctors agreed,

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