This mother was wrong


Why does everyone jump all over the father of this child, and blame him for the failure of their marriage. This is the mother's fault for not acknowledging the problems with this pregnancy and continuing along with it. It was all about pride. She wanted to prove them all wrong, and she disregarded the fact that she brought a child into the world that was in constant pain, physically and mentally limited, and totally dependent on her. She is sick, and the fact that the father gets demonized for his refusal to be apart of this is sick as well. This is not a feel good movie, this is a movie about one woman's struggle that originated from one woman's vanity. The mother also didn't even pick up the context involved with Amy. Amy represents one of a million children in this world who could have used a loving parent. Why couldn't she have just embraced the fact that her child was deformed and moved on to adopt some child who needed a family (like Amy), there are plenty of them around. It was heartbreaking that noone in this movie mentions this to her at all. Its one thing to raise a child with so many problems its another to ignore all the warnings about it just to prove you can do it.

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i assume your name is Alex meaning your a guy , well i think moms in general have certain feelings about their children more than men do . it's a very hard thing for her to agree with the abortion solution and lose her own daugther - to kill a living soul - although the child will suffer but she deserves to live the life ....
i mean if a was in a situation like this i would never get rid of the baby no matter what , i'll raise the child and give her extra care too ... because having a kid is a miracle not everyone has that ; so healthy or not i'll take the baby just the way it is and go through life just the way it's written to happen


Do you absolutley despise me?
No i despise myself
Why?
For allowing myself to love you once

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Rather sexist aren't you? Maybe it's Alexandria. What a crock to think that this movie isn't a paean to anti-abortion. You can't understand cause your not a woman, you can't understand because NO mother would ever harm her child. Read the news. This is a Lifetime movie - totally stereotypical. I found the movie painful - the poor child was barely there. And how would the mother ever know what her child was thinking? (re the novel).

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I am so glad I revisited this board and found someone else who could not figure out why this was a 'feel good' movie. Thank You.

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[deleted]

The child had a right to life even if it wasn't what people would consider an ideal life. She had a mother and grandmother who loved her tremendously. Her uncle loved her as if she were his own. .. she had a *friend* who understood her better than anyone. She had joy in her life. Her life was not a waste just because she was handicapped.

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You are totally accurate here and I agree with you. What is a mere human being (whether father or mother)doing deciding whether their child lives or dies? Yes, we may not understand why God allows certain birth defects (some of which may be serious), but we surely don't have a right to terminate what God has conceived. God hasn't given us this supposed "right." Much better to leave the unexplainable questions with God and seek to love, care for, and raise such a child. And remember, you and I could have been one who was born with a physical or mental deformity.

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Not to judge other people, but if I personally had ever been pregnant I believe I'd have wanted the baby no matter what. Doctors don't know everything, occasionally they're wrong, and even if they aren't, who's to say okay, this kid is going to be "defective" and doesn't deserve to live? Didn't Hitler think tall, blue-eyed blondes were the ideal and everyone else was basically inferior? Eugenics, designer babies, et cetera?

I didn't get the impression at ALL that "vain" Dianne was looking for attention as a brave mother soldiering on. She knew she was going to have a hard row to hoe, but she wanted her child to be born even if the baby wasn't going to be perfect. A relative of mine was the same way. Took her and her husband fifteen years to conceive (which they finally did at a fairly advanced age and after they adopted two children) and she refused amniocentesis saying it didn't matter how the baby was going to turn out, she'd want it anyway.

In the book (which is excellent) at the end you find out Julia knows exactly what's going on around her and then some. It would have been a tragedy to snuff out her life before she got a chance to experience it.

There. My two cents' worth.

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You are sick. I hope if you ever have children you do not have a sick child- since we all know your answer- kill them. The mother choose to play the hand she was dealt and ove her child- after all there are no guarantees the child could have lived a week unhealthy ot lived 80 healthy years. Diane did what any real mother would do- lovew the child.

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[deleted]

I think the OP makes thoughtful points. I didn't think the mother character was particularly sympathetic nor the father particularly unsympathetic. The story assumes a pretty tenuous viewpoint.

However, the crux the OP left out was that the main character was the doctor/brother, David. He was what this movie was about, and thank goodness the woman he loved silently and devoted himself to for so many years finally saw it at the end. She was as clueless as her husband in this matter.

The one and only reason I watched this movie to the end was that I could see from the first few minutes that the doctor's struggle was going to be the interesting one.

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Dianne knew who she was making a life with when she chose Mark. He told her that he did not face difficult things when he told her he did not feel bad about not visiting his mother when she was dying--and David was there and he could do it. Dianne made excuses for him and to him about his choices but she probably thought he would be different for her (because people think they are special enough to change someone else) but Mark was only remaining true to who he always was. I don't think he is a victim or a villain, just a person of limited emotional resources.

In the book, the story was more about David and Amy, his steadfastness (and regret at his own shyness and wasted opportunities) and how they all tried to come together (especially Julia)to show Amy the way out. I think the moral was that each life is valuable if you choose to make it valuable and you miss out on a lot of what makes life worthwhile when you withhold yourself from things you don't face or open yourself up for.

I don't think it was meant to be prolife, just a story of people making the choices they thought they could best live with in the long run.

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the father was still wrong he supposed to stand by his words in his wedding vows that means standing by your wife through thick and thin. i thought it was a cheap cop out for leaving his wife for a mentally handicapped kid there's no excuse for that. you either love that kid as your own or leave like a coward just like he did. enough said!

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It is truly sad to know that there is even one person out there who actually thinks this... like the father in the movie does:

That a person does not have the right to live if he or she is not perfectly healthy?? How heartless and inhumane! It's like you are a reincarnation of Hitler!

My life was saved when I was just 6 weeks old. Doctors told my mom they couldn't find anything wrong with me but a mother knows her child. A mother knows when something is wrong. She kept on going to doctors and finally one took a look at me and knew that my thyroid gland was not giving producing enough thyroxin. If I hadn't been diagnosed before I was 3 months old, I would have been handicapped somehow and I don't even know if I would be alive today. So... the doctors didn't know anything was wrong with me when I was in the womb, it was only when I was 6 weeks old that the problem was diagnosed. (I was lathargic, my skin was spotty like a leopard, and I slept *way too much*) If you were one of the doctors my mom saw, would you have told her to put me out of my misery???????????

Did you catch the line at all where Diane is telling her no-good (I'll love you and be with you if you are able to give me a perfectly healthy child) husband:

Julia has a friend, Mark! They sing songs, tell secrets and share ice cream!

Did you not notice how much Amy's life changed for the better while getting to know Julia, despite her difficult home life? Julia was a real friend to her because she did not- okay, COULD not- judge her the way other girls would. Amy talked about how girls at school traded things with their friends but she didn't. Obviously she was excluded in some way. You probably see their friendship as a charitable act on Amy's part. Whatever it was, Amy felt valued in it-as friends should. Diane told her 'Do you know what it has meant to me for Julia to have a friend? I can't tell you. Not in words. This has been the best summer of her life.' Near the end of the movie, Amy tells Diane what she knows Julia is feeling: 'She thanks you for her life. She's glad you're her mother.'

Julia was not a waste of anyone's time. She was conceived from what was believed to be love and her father abandoned her because she wasn't the ideal child he had hoped for.

If you are ever in the position of having a child, I hope for the child's sake it is healthy enough for you to think it is worth your time to love so that it is not aborted. Even a child conceived by rape has a right to life. The mother is not obliged to raise it if she doesn't want to. But the child is not guilty of anything so it should not be punished for what its parent has done. From what you have said in the orginal post, you do not deserve the gift of a child if that is your view on life. (I do believe though, that if a couple is having difficulty just conceiving a child naturally, that it must be an indication that they were meant to adopt a child who needs a loving home. And because so many children need loving homes, it should be a crime to charge people the ridiculous fees involved in adoption. My friend and her husband were only able to have one biological child. That birth was followed by several miscarriages. Even though they couldn't afford it, they adopted two children by the same parents who needed a loving, healthy home.)

It seems there is a young man's life you need to become familiar with. His name was Mattie Stepanek. He lived a short life because he was sick but his life was definitely not a waste either. He has inspired so many people. He was put on this Earth for a reason. Watch this video of his mother talking about him. Watch other videos about him. Clearly his religious beliefs will be lost on you but there must be other messages of his that should have an impact somehow...hopefully. http://youtu.be/zjk9UKa9Zz8

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Good post!!!!


Mary

Believe in the magic of your dreams

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Thank you ... and thank you for bringing me back to it because I had forgotten it! (still believe it!)

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sioban - great post. Glad I was able to read it.

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Thank you :)

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I fully agree with what you are saying here so clearly and eloquently. You are right. While we may not understand why some children are not perfect physically or perfect mentally, we can trust that God has a reason. Maybe it is to shake us out of our selfish lives and give us the opportunity to love someone sacrificially. The irresponsible and unloving father insisted on life under his own terms. This is not what genuine love means--whether it be love for one's child or love for one's wife. Thank you so much!

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Thank you :)

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Are you flipping kidding me? There is nothing wrong with wanting to carry a child that may or may not have problems later on. Like other posters have said, doctors can be wrong or there can be an error with the test. I was 19 when I got pregnant for the first time, and they told me that my baby would have down-syndrome. That not only should I get an amniocentesis to confirm it but to get an abortion because that would be better for everyone involved. I was furious, not only did they think that I wouldn't want my child but they were trying to force me into having a procedure (amnio) that had a higher risk of something going wrong than my child having down-syndrome. Just because I was 19 that didn't mean that I would love my baby any less than any other mother just because of a genetic problem. After my appointment and my mother learned what the genetic specialist told me and how she was pretty much trying to force me not only to get an amnio, but possibly an abortion as well she just went off. Who cares if a pregnancy is to a young woman or not, if it's planned or not? That doesn't give anyone the right to push unwanted tests or an abortion on somebody who clearly doesn't want it.

For the most part of my pregnancy I was high risk because of the diagnosis my baby could have down-syndrome and other complications. I wasn't getting along with the father at the time but the baby had nothing to do with it we were just young and he was immature. I wanted to have my baby because I felt that my child deserved a chance at life, that just because he could have a deformity or disability that didn't make him less of a person. And I'm pretty sure that's how the mother felt in this movie.

And guess what my son is now 5 years old and with the exception of mild asthma and acid reflux he's perfectly healthy and NORMAL! So is his brother who is 2 and I'm expecting a 3rd baby boy any day now. I had random tests come up with a false negative or say something might be wrong with each of my children, and you know what each of those tests were wrong. Heck with my current pregnancy due to medications I was on when I got pregnant there was a probability for my baby to have deformities, but once again it wasn't anything life threatening or that couldn't be managed so until I knew for sure one way or another myself and my husband weren't concerned. According to all my ultrasounds and tests they love to run on me, there's not a single abnormality with the exception that they consider him to be "small". And even my regular doctor has said that his size is fine when compared to my other boys because they were the same, I just don't have big babies.

Any woman who has ever had children knows that the tests can be wrong or that they missed something until after the birth. That doesn't mean that just because a doctor says there is a problem that there will be. Had I terminated my pregnancy 6 years ago like people were telling me to I wouldn't have the crazy little spaz that I do now. I honestly don't know how or what my life would be like without him or his brothers because they are all perfect and bring such joy to everyone.

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Good for you Megan!

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