The Atlantic has a profound piece on Australian parents seeking to have their daughters with disabilities sterilized.
On one side, removing women's uteruses can ensure that they will not have children they can't care for and can improve their health in some situations. As one parent whose 31-year-old daughter has the mentality of a three-year-old described it to the magazine, "The hardest part for Sophie’s Sydney-based parents was managing her periods. 'She has an older sister and a younger sister and we tried to get her to use pads, but it just didn’t work,' said Merren Carter, Sophie’s mother."
On the other side, sterilization raises the specter of eugenics. As The Atlantic reported: "One woman’s father, who believed that she should not have children, told her she was going to the hospital to have her tonsils taken out. 'I did not have a sore throat afterwards,' she told the [Australian Senate] committee. It was only when she was trying to have kids with a long-term partner that she had realized what happened. Her partner eventually left her because he wanted children."
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