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.
The woman, identified only as K.E.J. in court records, isn't capable of raising a child on her own, but her guardian did not prove that sterilization would be in her best interests, a three-judge panel in Chicago ruled unanimously.
"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."
The ruling was the first appellate opinion on the issue in Illinois.
"It's extraordinarily significant" because it guarantees the disabled a court hearing, said Katie Watson, a Northwestern 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.
K.E.J., 29, suffered a brain injury as a child when she was struck by a car. As a result, she cannot be left alone to operate a stove or perform most household chores.
The woman lives with her aunt, who was appointed as her guardian in the mid-1990s. In 2003, the aunt filed a "petition for tubal ligation" in Cook County Probate Court, arguing that her niece had a bad medical reaction to other birth-control methods.
mjhiggins@tribune.com
Chicago Tribune, United States
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