Why Are We Sterilizing Children?
We no longer let doctors amputate healthy limbs. Why do let them sterilize children?
By Mia Ashton
In the 1990s, Dr. Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary in Scotland, performed leg amputations on two men. Both men were perfectly healthy but suffering from “apotemnophilia,” a rare psychiatric condition involving the desire to amputate healthy limbs. Apotemnophiles claim not to feel complete with four limbs and obsess over the idea of having unwanted body parts chopped off.
Smith believed the surgeries were life-saving, arguing that otherwise, the patients would attempt the amputation themselves and possibly die in the process. He claimed the men’s motivations were not erotic. But it was later revealed that Smith was indeed aware that one of the men ran an amputee fetish website.
After conducting an investigation, the hospital deemed the procedures unethical, and Smith was banned from further mutilating healthy bodies. The ethically dubious experiment ended.
But let's imagine for a moment an alternate reality, a world in which a powerful apotemnophile lobby group convinces society that apotemnophile rights is the next civil rights movement. The messaging of this movement would be simple: An amputee is anyone who identifies as an amputee. Amputee rights are human rights.
Imagine how activists would insist that some people are born with innate amputee identities and they are the most oppressed people in the world. Imagine they declare it “apotemnophobic” to say that humans are bipedal, and the movement’s foot soldiers seek to ruin the lives of all who say otherwise.
Now imagine that within a few short years, there was a sudden 4,000% increase in teens identifying as amputees, yet we were forbidden from being concerned. Instead, we were supposed to celebrate it.
In this world, parents of children with supposedly innate amputee identities are expected to rejoice at the thought of their child undergoing the amputation of a healthy limb, while protesters take to the streets to demand that adolescents have access to limb amputations on demand.
Celebrities come out as amputees and pose on the cover of magazines after having their perfectly healthy limbs chopped off, and everyone applauds their bravery and lavishes them with attention and adoration the way our society did with Ellen Page.
Schools teach children as young as kindergarten that some people have amputee identities and tell students they can choose how many limbs they have. Posters promoting body mutilation suddenly adorn the walls of many classrooms.
Children’s television shows feature amputee characters, so children with innate amputee identities can see themselves represented. As if in lockstep, the number of children identifying as amputees increase, but the mention of the possibility of social contagion is viciously suppressed.
Surgeons advertise their amputation services to teens on social media, pose proudly with young patients as they show off their new stump, and make quirky videos lamenting only having four leg amputations booked for that week.
Such a world would obviously be mad, yet our reality is far worse. Because along with healthy body parts, many teens today are being allowed to sacrifice their health, fertility, and future chance of intimacy while they are too young even to comprehend what that means.
How did we find ourselves in the grips of such insanity? To understand, we must take a journey into the past.
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