Stanley's request.. Dr. Stanley, like most women, would not have liked her father to be the influence in such a personal decision. The final reason that Dr. Stanley's gynecologist made the right decision is because any time we eliminate choices for ourselves or others, we eliminate our freedom of choice for ourselves. If Dr. Stanley has no children of own, and although adoption is a generous and wonderful thing for people to do, it is not a good thing to permanently eliminate a freedom that has not been exercised. The conditions and circumstances that might warrant one to exercise a particular freedom of choice are subject to endless possibilities. The possibilities go beyond those suggested by Dr. Stanley's gynecologist. There is a childbearing lifetime of events and circumstances that could lead a woman to decide she might like to give birth to a child.

For those women who have never experienced the miracle of delivering into the world another life, there are no words that can express or bring the meaning and feelings of that experience to another person. The only way to experience it, is to do it. While the loss of privacy and the invasiveness of modern medicine and institutions tend to demean the individual and the significance of the event, the final delivery of life into the world erases the sense of humiliation in being poked and probed by strangers. it's all too possible that Dr. Stanley, as a physician, is wearing blinders when it comes to the experience of delivering life from one's own body.

At 26, Dr. Stanley has many choices to choose from in preventing herself from becoming pregnant, other than permanently surgically altering her...

As a trained physician, she might think that her level of education and specialized training put her in a frame of mind as to be beyond error; but this is the nature of training speaking, not her humanity. The nature of her training has instilled in her - and done so with purpose - the notion of being infallible in her decisions that are made in life threatening situations. This is not a life threatening situation, and she owes it to herself, to her right to exercise her freedom of choice, not to permanently eliminate a choice, a freedom, that she has not previously exercised. The gynecologist made a good decision, but perhaps not for all the right reasons.
Finally, Dr. Stanley, as a professional and a physician, should know that decisions of permanence should not be made without consultation. Dr. Stanley should assure herself that her decision to permanently render herself sterile is not arising out of some Freudian type of psychological event, past or present. That she has herself given the matter long and thoughtful contemplation is not enough. Nor is it enough to discuss it with one's best friend, or mother - or even father. Rather, a trained professional who can help a person understand their choice, is at least something she owes to herself - no one else, but definitely to herself.

Dr. Stanley is a young woman. To be sterilized at 26 years young is simply the wrong thing to do. There are just too many things that happen in life, that divert an individual's walk along one path to another. The path one walks at 26 is not a path one will have the choice to walk again.