Court Opinion

ID: 9521384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:03:48.449976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:42.285717
License: Public Domain

*573Nolan, J.
(dissenting). I dissent. Sterilization is a species of self mutilation which is almost always irreversible. Its effect is to deprive the sterilized person of her or his capacity to beget or bear a child. We do not deal here with what has been described as therapeutic sterilization in which as a secondary effect to an operative procedure which is necessary to save the life of a person such person is rendered sterile (e.g., cancer of a reproductive organ may require its surgical removal).
The court today has decided that the probate judge has the power to divine the wishes of a severely mentally retarded women who “currently functions at the level of a four year old” as to whether she should permit herself to be rendered forever incapable of conceiving and bearing a child. To say the least, this is an impossible task.
An examination of the criteria which are prescribed for the probate judge’s consideration leads me to the conclusion that the bias is heavily in favor of contraception. Somehow, pregnancy comes off as an evil to be avoided. The court vouchsafes that the probate judge must consider the possibility of “less intrusive means of birth control.” The opinion continues: “The court should find that all less drastic contraceptive methods, including supervision, education, and training are unworkable.”
The court seems to find support for its position in the fact that competent men and women have a statutory right to be sterilized according to G. L. c. 112, § 12W, and that (the argument continues) the government deprives the incompetent person of a sacred constitutional right to be sterilized if it denies a judge the power to approve such sterilization. The flaw in this argument is its attribution of denial of such a dubious right to the government. It is the incompetent’s mental condition which makes him or her incapable of free choice, not the government. The very condition of incompetence makes the doctrine of substituted judgment a cruel charade.
The court speaks of human dignity in connection with the free choice to be sterilized. It is difficult to think of an ex*574perience more degrading to human dignity than a sterilization ordered by a judge who is empowered by the court to read the heart and mind of the incompetent ward and forever bar the ward from bringing forth a child.