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June 24, 1980
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SUPERIOR COURT Justice John P. Morissey issued a ruling here last week invalidating a Vermont law which governs sterilization of mentally ill or retarded people. The law violated Fourteenth Amendment due process guarantees and furthermore did not adequately protect the individual: it did not "set out sufficient standards of criteria for ordering a sterilization or to control the discretion of those individuals (the person's parents or guardian and three physicians), applying the law," he ruled.
The case in question involved Martha R., who was a minor when the case was initiated in 1973. Her parents intended simply to bring her to a doctor and have her sterilized without complying with the provisions of the law. An injunction was issued against the operation.
After voiding the old statute. Judge Morissey went on to rule that neither the parents nor any doctor could properly make this judgment. He then defined standards for decision by the court, highlighting the idea that "the nature of the disability renders the person incapable now or in the future of caring for a child" and that no "less drastic alternative" (i.e., birth control) "is medically indicated." On the basis of these criteria, he then ordered the operation be performed. The family is not expected to appeal the decision.
Commissioner Surles hopes that Judge Morissey's ruling will prompt the Vermont Legislature to pass new legislation during its next session. The Department of Mental Health will be working with the Vermont Association for Retarded Citizens (VARC) in drafting a bill that would govern only the mentally retarded (not the mentally ill) and would guarantee them protection in the form of legal counsel, procedural steps that would have to be taken before the courts could order sterilization, and criteria that would allow involuntary sterilization only where there were clear‐cut health or safety reasons justifying it.
Dr. Surles emphasizes that if the retarded person in question is found competent to make a personal value judgment on the matter, only very compelling evidence and unusual circumstances should justify involuntary sterilization under the law.
Marcia R's attorney, Sally Fox of the Burlington‐based Vermont Development Disabilities Law Project, agrees, saying, "the freedom to bear children is a fundamental right under the Constitution" which should be rigorously protected.
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