Severely disabled Abbie Dorn wins the right to spend time with her children

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2011:

After an acrimonious yearlong legal battle, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Friday that a paraplegic woman who communicates largely by blinking has a legal right to see her 4-year-old triplets.

In a 10-page tentative ruling, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Frederick C. Shaller said that even though Abbie Dorn, 34, "suffers from a profound brain injury that had led to her near total and complete disability," it would be in the children's best interests to have a relationship with their mother.

"The court finds that even though [Abbie] cannot interact with the children, the children can interact with [Abbie] — and that the interaction is beneficial for the children," Shaller wrote. "They can touch her, see her, bond with her, and can carry those memories with them."

In fact, he wrote, if the children cannot develop a relationship with Dorn, "the court finds that they will likely suffer psychological harm that will negatively affect their development and their relationship with their father." Read more>>

See also: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Patients who are conscious but almost entirely paralysed could be aided by French research that reads their brain