“mentally handicapped”
In 1977, an act was passed that gives any mentally retarded/handicapped adult the same rights of any other adult, unless they have been adjudicated incompetent. They are not children-they are no different from any other adult with a disability-a former casemanager, I’m very familiar with that act. Elderly persons are not “dependent” in that sense unless they have been found incompetent, either-they have the same rights as you and I.
“In 1977, an act was passed that gives any mentally retarded/handicapped adult the same rights of any other adult, unless they have been adjudicated incompetent. They are not children-they are no different from any other adult with a disability-a former casemanager, I’m very familiar with that act. Elderly persons are not “dependent” in that sense unless they have been found incompetent, either-they have the same rights as you and I.”
These laws are ridiculously loophole ridden and rarely enforced.
I personally know a woman, have known her since age 5, with fetal alcohol syndrome. She is just plain stupid. She lacks common sense. She can’t hold a job, she can’t write, she gets dehydrated to the point of entering an ER because she forgets to drink, she gets in weird situations like almost moving to the middle east to “marry” a foreign exchange student she met only on the internet, and only didn’t go because she couldn’t put the steps together to get her passport. She is currently sharing an apartment with junkies, although she does not use.
Last year she was raped, and gave birth to a baby a few months ago. She loves the baby. She’s raising this baby, in her junkie apartment, without enough sense to drink enough water herself or put sunscreen on when she is outside. She gets some welfare and is in regular contact with social workers. Nobody is taking the baby away.
This apparently perfectly normal baby is being raised by this woman. She is not in any but a physical sense an “adult.”