Lunch Break: Disabled mom Abbie Dorn’s fight to see her children
Growing up, Abbie Dorn always dreamed of becoming a mother. She endured brain damage following childbirth complications and lost her children.
Abby is the mother of three healthy triplets. Her home is filled with pictures of Esti, Reuvi and Yossi. But in the years since her children were born, Dorn has not been able to talk to them. She can’t hold them or watch them play.
Now, while her children run and play in their Los Angeles, CA home, Dorn’s family – more than 2,500 miles away in Myrtle Beach, SC, is locked in a legal battle with the children’s father to grant Dorn the right to see her children. The family’s lawsuit, which could make its way into a courtroom as early as this May, could become a landmark legal case defining what it means for someone to be a parent, especially when that parent is disabled.
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
This is absolutely heartbreaking, and it makes me downright angry. Those children have a right to see their mother, and she has the right to see them. She is not less than a human being, she IS a human being. This is the kind of thing that happens when we decide to determine by arbitrary means what “makes” a human “human.”
I can understand this father fearing his children’s reactions, but children need to be prepared in advance, and they need to be taught NOT to be afraid. It’s really that simple. When my grandfather was dying, I took my children to see him. They were 5 and 3 at the time, and I prepared them in advance for what they would see. Though they had questions about great-grandpa and why he was hooked up to machines and why he looked different, they were not afraid, because we, as their parents, prepared them for the hospital visit.
This father has the opportunity to teach his children a valuable lesson. I hope he doesn’t blow it.
I can see the father’s point of view, but I also have other concerns regarding this situation.
So sad. We must pray for everyone involved. God bless them!
I can understand this father fearing his children’s reactions, but children need to be prepared in advance, and they need to be taught NOT to be afraid.
Agreed 100% Kel. Sad story indeed, but the saddest thing is telling the poor woman she can’t see her kids. Betcha the court rules in favor of the mother’s visitation.
I hope so, Doug.
This story angers me incredibly. It’s a compete reversal of ‘for better or worse’, for one thing. And I find the husband’s attitude about their children not visiting or knowing their mother disgusting. His ignorance and cruelty to the disabled is an outgrowth of our culture, where its legal and fine to destroy the disabled before they’re born, or try and euthanize them.
My youngest brother, Tad, had Duchenne MD, and would have turned 30 years old today. The cruelty and ignorance of people proved to be more harsh than the effects of the disease, as he often said.
We kill or hide or disabled fellow human beings away, and so the cruelty of this story is no surprise. But it’s sad and very wrong to separate a disabled mother from her children.
And another thing- what we see here is a crisis of manhood. A real man would have honored his vows and the mother of his children. He would be able to handle tragic events and explain them to his children rather than remarrying and putting another ‘mother’ for his kids.
I think about how any of us could fall into the circumstance that this mother did, and how tragedy was unneccisarily compounded here makes me sick.
After a little court-ordered counseling, abusive parents receive custody of their children all the time.
To deny children the right to get to know a non-abusive parent is a type of abuse in itself.
As someone who grew up around the disabled (from senile to stroke to quadraplegic to missing an eye etc) this is so sad on several levels. and it’s all the more tragic because his excuse of wanting to ‘save’ his children from it is completely unbased! I spent time with the severly brain damaged from a young age, there was nothing weird, scary, frightening, troubling, confusing et all about it. When you are exposed to it young it’s just another facet of normal. The 90 year old who stood and yelled at the tv in french while she shook her cane and had a complete fit everytime a plane went overhead was just as normal and natural as my 6 year old play mate, and just as much of my friend! This father is missing an opertunity that few children today get, to grow up knowing imperfect people are just another normal part of life! I wouldn’t trade that gift of my childhood for anything!
I couldn’t agree more with the previous comments. My mom is profoundly deaf, thankfully no one tried to remove me from her. My life is richer for the mother I have, Thanks mom & dad ILY!!