Medical Framework According to the Western medical perspective, deafness is seen as a deficit that needs to be “cured or fixed”. Consequently, cochlear implant programs promise the “normalization” of a child into the hearing community and the potential for deaf children to adopt spoken language (Hyde & Power, 2006, p. 107). Currently, cochlear implants offer improved sound stimulation. In addition, there are examples of children learning speech through oral training. However, some argue that ASL enables better and richer communication (Sachs, 1986, p. 6). Children’s Right to an Open Future Davis proposes (1997) Feinberg’s concept of “the child’s right to an open future” in order to have a constructive ethical evaluation on the debate between disability and culture view of deafness (p. 562). That is, considering ethical challenges as “a conflict between parental autonomy and the child’s potential autonomy”. Another evaluation for the parents’ decision uses the Kantian principle, which involves treating the child as an end rather than a means. Therefore, parental decisions have to be directed towards the child’s wellbeing instead of their own worldview. Review on Cochlear Implants Experts cite evidence in favor of a critical period in which speech training in profoundly deaf children with cochlear implants has successful results (Ahtari, 2017). Since the critical age is before the age where children develop autonomy and self-expression, implant surgery does have ethical implications. Firstly, for some deaf individuals, cochlear implants may be considered as useful tools. However, it should be acknowledged that even the latest cochlear implants do not provide “typical hearing”. It requires conscious effort to learn each spoken word and extensive training for a profoundly deaf child to learn speech that is mostly given by “oralist” schools.
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