Spoilers are in the 2nd paragraph.
If you think the mentally ill are treated poorly today, watch this episode and be proud of just how far we've come since 1986. Watching nearly 40 years after it aired is like going back in time with your current knowledge to watch a slave auction. Your mind simply cannot fathom what you're witnessing. Hearing biological parents speak so heartlessly about their own mentally handicapped child is absolutely devastating. To think that this mentality was considered socially acceptable at any point in our history is mind-blowing, especially knowing that doctors, the church, and families encouraged such things.
A set of parents choose to give up their child to foster care and cut him out of their lives, lying to their other children about the true mental capacity of their sibling, and then file a restraining order to prevent a prospective adoptive couple from becoming his guardians? Seriously?! I watched this unfold, but was in utter disbelief about what I was witnessing. I was cursing these so-called parents for their callousness and apparent disdain for their own flesh and blood.
If you think the mentally ill are treated poorly today, watch this episode and be proud of just how far we've come since 1986. Watching nearly 40 years after it aired is like going back in time with your current knowledge to watch a slave auction. Your mind simply cannot fathom what you're witnessing. Hearing biological parents speak so heartlessly about their own mentally handicapped child is absolutely devastating. To think that this mentality was considered socially acceptable at any point in our history is mind-blowing, especially knowing that doctors, the church, and families encouraged such things.
A set of parents choose to give up their child to foster care and cut him out of their lives, lying to their other children about the true mental capacity of their sibling, and then file a restraining order to prevent a prospective adoptive couple from becoming his guardians? Seriously?! I watched this unfold, but was in utter disbelief about what I was witnessing. I was cursing these so-called parents for their callousness and apparent disdain for their own flesh and blood.