Dr. Elizabeth Stanley a Personal

¶ … Dr. Elizabeth Stanley

A Personal Moral Perspective

Elizabeth Stanley, a 26-year-old professional woman, sought to have a permanent surgical procedure that would eliminate her choice for having children. At the time she sought to have the procedure done, she was unmarried and without children. Her gynecologist refused her request, not for medical reasons, as the procedure was routine and not one that could harm her other than render her permanently incapable of conceiving and giving birth. Rather, the gynecologist questioned the basis of Dr. Stanley's own knowledge and experience with what she was requesting, suggesting that her request was lacked the knowledge and experience of childbirth and rearing. Her gynecologist also suggested that he could not do the procedure because of a personal relationship with and experienced shared between himself and Dr. Stanley's father. That Dr. Stanley was not living up to her family obligation to produce offspring, and he could not be complicit in that way because of his relationship with Dr. Stanley's father. The gynecologist made a good and appropriate decision for the first reason, and not the latter.

As a 26-year-old unmarried woman, and as a woman who has not experienced childbirth or rearing, the permanent results of a tubal ligation that would prevent a woman the opportunity to choose to have a child, or choose not to have a child, is too drastic a decision to be made without the benefit of life experience that comes to a woman by an older age in life. In other words, by the time a woman is 30 years old her thoughts are the embodiment of her experiences until that time. By the time she is 40, her thoughts, again, are the embodiment, the evolution, of her experiences gained by the time she is that age; and so on, and so on. Dr. Stanley's experiences are, as the gynecologist suggested, not yet substantial enough to give her the experiences that could lead her to such a permanent decision. The gynecologist has his patient's best mental and physical health in mind in denying her request to permanently eliminate her choice of childbearing.

Also, as a physician herself, Dr. Stanley is highly educated and trained, but her education and training has required an investment of her emotions and time that have kept her participating in the day-to-day life that goes on about her because of the demands made on her time to achieve the academic milestones that would complete her medical degree. Moreover, as a physician in training, Dr. Stanley no doubt had to put her emotions and opinions into a state of suspended animation so as to focus on maintaining the scientific thought, analysis that would lend itself to the treatment of people's health conditions and crises. As a result, it could be argued that Dr. Stanley's knowledge and experience of people, humanity, society has been limited to that which comes to her through her practice of medicine, and as such has perhaps left her somewhat guarded and disappointed as a result. While this may not be the case at all, it would not be a stretch to suggest that Dr. Stanley, as a result of the unique nature of the focus she had to maintain in her education and practice of medicine, is academically advanced, but perhaps socially and emotionally not the equivalent of event her 26 years of age. Again, it may not be the case, but such is the consideration that must be given a request such as that made by Dr. Stanley.

Unfortunately, Dr. Stanley's gynecologist, who did make a good choice in refusing her request; did not allow Dr. Stanley to focus on her own benefit from his decision because he personalized it, suggesting that his relationship with her father influenced his decision to deny Dr. 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 reproductive system in such a way that it eliminates her choice to ever bear children. 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.