A mother’s wish to have her disabled teenage daughter’s womb removed looks set to become the next landmark case in the courts to test the ethics of medical intervention where patients cannot decide for themselves.

Disability groups and academics have been united in urging caution in the case in which Alison Thorpe wants doctors to perform a hysterectomy on her daughter Katie,15, who has cerebral palsy and the mental capacity of an 18-month-old child.

Miss Thorpe, of Billericay, Essex, wants the operation to go ahead because she fears that her daughter will not be able to cope with the onset of menstruation and that it would greatly add to the discomfort and stress suffered by her daughter, who is already doubly incontinent. Her aim is to protect Katie from the “pain, discomfort and indignity of menstruation”.

Doctors who have been approached to perform the operate at St John’s Hospital, Chelmsford, are seeking legal advice — and that advice is expected to bring the case before the courts, where Katie would be separately represented by Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.

The case of Katie Thorpe poses some of the same dilemmas as other key medical cases in recent years that have arisen when a baby, child or person cannot give informed consent to medical treatment (or its withdrawal) — and action by doctors and/or families is challenged as a potential breach of the patient’s human rights.

The case is also the first in Britain where an operation is being sought for a person unable to consent and where the treatment is not strictly medically required.

Richard Parnell, head of research and public policy at Scope, the charity with more than 50 years’ experience of working with families of disabled children, said that it had worrying parallels with that of Ashley X in America in January, in which a nine-year-old girl with a mental age of a three-month-old was given drugs to stunt her growth and had her womb and breasts removed.

“We had concerns about the case of Ashley X but were told that ‘such a case would not happen in Britain’,” he said. “I think that this case would need to go to court to clarify what is a very grey area of the law.”

Andy Rickell, an executive director with Scope, said he recognised the difficult situation faced by Katie’s family. But, he said: “It is very difficult to see how this kind of invasive surgery, which is not medically necessary and which will be very painful and traumatic, can be in Katie’s best interests.”

This will be the legal touchstone for any decision by the courts to sanction the operation: what will be in Katie’s best interests. Opinion is already strongly divided. David Congdon, head of campaigns and policy at Mencap, said: “It is shocking to consider removing the womb of a teenage girl for no good medical reason. Children and young people with a disability have the same rights as everyone else.”

He goes further: “To perform such an invasive and unnecessary operation would be morally wrong and we urge the courts and doctors to consider the rights of the girl above anything else."

Lawyers for the girl, however, will argue that it is just because they have her best interests at heart that the operation is deemed necessary and that it is very much medically required in the broadest sense of the word — not just for her physical health but mental health, too.

Times Recommends

• Hacker in final plea to stop extradition
• Lawyers? They're simply riveting . . .
• Companies slash legal spending