I disagree. Emma was in jail and Snowing had no choice but to leave their daughter or let their entire family be cursed for possibly all eternity. Milan chose to leave her kid behind to chase a better life. She didn’t have to. That’s entirely different.
You’re assuming Milah had a choice. Sometimes people get into a very dark place mentally, where they literally cannot see alternatives. This is why people commit suicide. Milah didn’t commit suicide, she ran away, but I believe her actions stemmed from the same dark place of hopelessness. In ‘The Crocodile’, she says to Rumple
“This isn’t a life. Not for me. Why can’t we just leave?”
That first sentence in particular is a major red flag for me. These are the sorts of phrases people used when they are seriously depressed – “This isn’t living”, “Life isn’t worth living”, “My life is pointless”. Anyone who has experienced serious depression can attest that it will drive you to doing things which can be hurtful to your loved ones.
What Rumpel did was also bad but he spent centuries trying to get back to Bae.
Well, how fortunate for Rumple that he had those centuries. So lucky that his life wasn’t cut short by murder, like he did to Milah.
I mean let’s pretend Milan was a real life woman in a real relationship where Rump was actually physically and emotionally abusive. Imagine if she had the chance to escape (with her child) but just booked it out of there alone.
This is a false analogy. It doesn’t make sense to compare leaving a child with a loving parent to leaving a child with an abusive parent.
For me it seems like Milah had moved out and moved on toward a new life with no regard for her child. And given the connection between a mother and her child that does seem way worse than killing someone you have no connection to at all. I’m not saying she can’t be forgiven but at that point it doesn’t seem like she really feeling bad about what she did.
First of all, I disagree that child abandonment, as bad as it is, is remotely in the same moral league as mass murder!!
But, moving on….there are multiple instances of her stating that she does in fact, feel bad.
1) 2X4 – ship scene.
Rumple: “You left him!”
Milah: “And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel sorry about that.”
2) 2X22 – JR
Bae: “She abandoned me.”
Hook: “Not a single day went by that your mother didn’t regret leaving you Baelfire. We talked about going back for you when you were old enough.”
3) 5X14 – boat scene
Milah: “My unfinished business was never Killian. It’s Baelfire, our son. I should have been there for him.”
Milah (a few moments later): “…so I can see him and I can say to him, ‘Son, I’m sorry for everything.'”
Does she deserve to die? Well I wouldn’t want many mothers like her walking around.
I agree that situations like theirs should be minimized. But I would suggest that shaming parents and judging them as deserving of the death penalty is hardly the way to go. I advocate cultural change, social support, education and family planning resources.