Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697631947193.pdf (Australia)
I would like the Senate Committee to note my disagreement with the proposal to make it illegal for any girl under 18 with intellectual disability to undergo any procedure which permanently takes away her ability to bear children, regardless of the individual's circumstances.

It is my firm belief that sterilisation should be permitted at the request of a young girl's carers, being her parents and her doctors.
It is my privilege to be closely involved with a ten-year old girl who is one of three children and is confined to a wheelchair, cannot talk, feed herself, toilet herself.

She cannot even turn the pages of a book.

This dear child cannot communicate any discomfort other than by crying or shrieking.

I feel so very strongly that she should be spared the monthly menstruation discomforts likely to prevail for the next 40 years.
If opponents of sterilisation could spend just one day in the shoes of devoted parents such as the ones of the girl I cite here, there is absolutely no doubt their opinion would change.

I earnestly plead with the committee to consider the rights of girls with severe intellectual and physical disabilities - these rights include being kept comfortable and happy by their carers specifically and by the community indirectly.
Their right to sterilisation is paramount and this should be achievable at the request of the girl's parents/guardian and her doctor/doctors who are responsible for every other aspect of the child's life.

The involuntary or coerced sterilisation of people with disabilities in AustraliaSubmission 45