Eyes wide open: Surgery to westernize the eyes of an Asian child

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 15-18

  Ouellette, Alicia ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHILD PARENT RELATION; CHILD WELFARE; CLINICAL DECISION MAKING; ESTHETIC SURGERY; EYE SURGERY; EYELID RECONSTRUCTION; GENDER IDENTITY; HEALTH HAZARD; HUMAN; MORALITY; PARENTAL ATTITUDE; PATIENT SAFETY; PEDIATRIC SURGERY; SEXUALITY; SHORT SURVEY; SURGICAL TECHNIQUE;

ADOLESCENT; ADOPTION; ASIAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP; BLEPHAROPLASTY; CHILD; DECISION MAKING; HUMANS; PARENTS; UNNECESSARY PROCEDURES;

EID: 59949088648     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Short Survey

References (20)

1. My description of the case is based on my best recollection of the doctor's remarks, but my memory of the details is spotty.
2. Meronk Eyelid Plastic Surgery, "Eyelid Surgery-Blepharoplasty," http://www.drmeronk.com/asian/asian-overview.html.
3. Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 66 (2000);
4. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).
5. J.A. Robertson, "Genetic Selection of Offspring Characteristics, " Boston University Law Review 76 (1996): 426-482, at 481.
6. For a more detailed discussion, see J.L. Dolgin, "The Fate of Childhood: Legal Models of Children and the Parent-Child Relationship," Albany Law Review 61 (1997): 345-431.
7. Robertson, "Genetic Selection Of Offspring Characteristics."
8. See In re Hofbauer, 47 N.Y.2d 648 (1979);
9. Tenenbaum v. Williams, 193 F.3d 581 (2d Cir. 1999);
10. and In re Hudson, 126 P.2d 756 (Wash. 1942).
11. In re Custody of a Minor, 379 N.E.2d 1053 (Mass. 1978);
12. Jehovah's Witnesses v. King County Hosp. Unit No. 1, 390 U.S. 598 (1968) (per curiam), aff'g 278 F. Supp. 488 (WD. Wash. 1967).
13. K. Davis, Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences: Cultural Studies on Cosmetic Surgery (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 93, quoting E. Kaw, "Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7, no. 1 (March 1993): 74-89.
14. C.S. Lee, "Blepharoplasty, Asian," at http://www.emedicine.com/ plastic/topic425.htm. Lee advises practitioners that "In current American society, Asian patients almost never seek to westernize their appearance, and surgeons should be wary of modifying a patients ethnic appearance, even in the rare case when it is requested."
15. Joel Feinberg characterized as "rights held in trust" those "rights that are to be saved for the child until he is an adult," such as the right to reproduce and the right to make life or death decisions. See J. Feinberg, "The Child's Right to an Open Future," in Whose Child? Children's Rights, Parental Authority, and State Power, ed. W. Aiken (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980), 124-53. Others have argued that the parent-child relationship is best viewed as one shaped by fiduciary responsibilities;
16. see E.S. Scott and R.E. Scott, "Parents as Fiduciaries," Virginia Law Review 81 (1995): 2401-2476.
17. This way of expanding the scope of the open future framework is developed by Dena Davis; see "Genetic Dilemmas and the Child's Right to an Open Future," Rutgers Law Journal28 (1997): 549-92.
18. For example, J. Bird, "Outside the Law: Intersex, Medicine and the Discourse of Rights," Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender 12 (2005): 65-80, at 74.
19. N. Ehrenreich, "Intersex Surgery, Female Genital Cutting, and the Selective Condemnation of 'Cultural Practices,'" Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review AO (2005): 71-140.
20. The compromise agreement reached between Washington Children's Hospital and Washington Protection and Advocacy System in the Ashley X case implements this paradigm for growth attenuation cases.