Unspoken Love. A mother is kept away from children because she is handicapped.

If you have no voice to soothe your children's fears...if you cannot move or hold them...are you still their mother?

To me, the answer is unequivocally YES.

But Dan Dorn of Southern California apparently believes just the opposite. A year after his wife Abbie is left paralyzed and unable to talk or feed herself after giving birth to their triplets, he divorces her, takes their children and now refuses to give her any visitation.

According to the LA Times, Dorn thinks that since Abbie cannot ASK to see the children, she must not WANT to. His attorney says Abbie's parents are the ones who really want visitation, but they are not legally entitled to it.

Dorn also maintains the now-four year old triplets are too young to understand what happened to Abbie. And he thinks they would feel guilty knowing their mother was injured while giving birth to them.

In my opinion, this legal battle must be a nightmare for Abbie. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be trapped inside a badly-damaged body...unable to defend my rights as a mother, slap my bastard ex-husband or call out for my children.

I truly believe in most cases, a man fully becomes a father the day his child is born. But a woman becomes a mother while the child is still in the womb. There is a connection formed between a mother and child that cannot be adequately explained. A father can have his own type of connection, but it is not the same.

I believe these children want to know their mother. Who is Dan Dorn to say that they don't? Who is HE to make the decision to keep them away from her? He says the kids would be harmed by seeing their mother in her severely disabled state. But I believe that risk is NOTHING compared to the harm done by making these children believe they don't have a mother at all.

Link to LA Times article: http://lat.ms/bzA9hI