"Law & Order: SVU" focused on the Ashley X case back in January, and I had a post transcribing the scene. (The Ashley X case is the one in which parents in Washington State received permission to stunt the growth of their 6-year-old disabled daughter so her body would remain small.)"Law & Order," with its usual twist, began its Nov. 26 episode as if it would be "ripped from the headlines" about the crane collapse March 2008 in New York City. (L&O creator and executive producer Dick Wolf explained on NPR's "Fresh Air" in 2005 that although that many ideas for the show are actually "ripped from the headlines," the ideas usually stop there and morph into a completely different plotline.)
And that's what happened in this episode, which you can watch at NBC.com.
In the January L&O:SVU episode, Detective Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay) argued the disability rights perspective. In the Nov. 26 episode of of L&O, ADA Mike Cutter (played by Linus Roache) argued the disability rights perspective in court, saying the procedure to keep a disabled child small by removing all her sex organs is a violation of the law as an "assault on a handicapped child."
It was interesting that the show had the male ADA outraged by what the parents planned to do, and had the female ADA, Connie Rubirosa (played by Alana De La Garza), voice a perspective in support of the parents. (The two actors are pictured above in a courtroom scene.)
In the episode, ADA Cutter was looking for a way to put the mother of the disabled girl into prison because her actions led to the girl's part-time caretaker ending up in a coma. The caretaker had protested the parents' plan to stunt their daughter's growth and complained to the doctor who originally agreed to do the procedure and then the doctor changed his mind.
The strongest support of the disability rights perspective in the show came when ADA Cutter questioned his witness, a doctor who was against the procedure, which she called "untested." The scene:
Doctor: The surgery will be painful for Lacey [the disabled girl] and the recovery long, and complications from the estrogen can't be discounted.
ADA Cutter: Are there other reasons your hospital's ethics committee refused to sanction this procedure?
Doctor: It's a slippery slope. Keeping Lacey small might make her easier to care for but then why not amputate her legs to make her more portable, remove her larynx to stop her from crying.
ADA Cutter: So you are really saying the convenience of the parents shouldn't be a relevant factor.
Doctor: In my opinion, it is clearly outweighed by the dignity anyone, especially a disabled child, must be accorded. She needs love, not surgery.
The mother argued that the surgery would allow them to keep the child at home with the family rather than being placed in an institution. Because the Medicaid payments would only cover an institution, the mother said keeping the child small would allow them to afford her care at home.
ADA Cutter couldn't get the judge to agree with his argument so he tried to make it part of the plea agreement with the mother, i.e. that she would get probation if she signed an agreement to never have the surgery performed on her daughter. Because this move was not something the district attorney's office should be doing, DA Jack McCoy (played by Sam Waterston) intervened and had it taken out of the plea agreement.
It's interesting that the Law & Order franchise would do another show focused on the Ashley X case. The CBS show "Without A Trace" aired a disability themed show during sweeps last week. It gets me wondering if shows are using guest characters with disabilities to ramp up the drama with hopes of ramping up their ratings.
