Please do not impersonate the actor’s representation of the below character in the film or television version.
DOGMA
Written By Kevin Smith
BETHANY
My first year in college. All through high school, I’d dated the same guy – Walter Flannigan. We were really in love, right? So much so that we decided to go to Carnegie Mellon together…that’s this college in Pittsburgh. So there we are – away at school, and there’s suddenly no parents to worry about anymore. So we’re screwing like rabbits – just constantly doing it. And I wound up getting pregnant. So he begs me to have it. He says we should quit school and get married, and I’m telling him that we’ll screw up our educations. We fought for about a week – my argument being there was no rush to have kids, you know? We could always have a baby in a couple of years – after school. So I got the abortion against his wishes . . . I mean, what the hell – it was my body, right? After graduation we got married and immediately set about trying to have kids. We tried like hell for the first six months, and – nothing. So I went to a gynaecologist to see it everything was okay on my end. (Pause) It wasn’t. My uterine wall had this fissure. It seems that the doctor who performed the procedure on me years before had somehow botched it. I’d never be able to have a child. (Takes a breath) So there I am – devastated. And now I have to go home to break the news to my husband who years before had begged me to have the baby – his baby. And after I explain it to him through my tears, he sits on the couch and rubs his eyes. And in the calmest, most rational voice I’ve ever heard anybody use in my life, he asks me for a divorce. And I fought him, you know? I tried to talk him out of it, told him there were alternatives, like we could adopt. And all he said was he wanted a wife who could have his children. (Pause)
I remember the exact moment I lost my faith. I was on the phone with my mother, and she was trying to council me through this…thing, and nothing she was saying was making me feel any better. and she said, ‘Bethany….God has a plan.” I was…I was so angry with her. I was, like…what about my plans, you know? I had planned to have a family…with my husband…wasn’t that plan good enough for God? (Pause) Apparently not. I hate thoughts like that, but y’know, they come to you – you can’t help it. When you’re a kid, you never question the whole faith thing. Nope. God’s in heaven, and he’s…she’s…always got her eye on you. I would give anything to feel that way again. (Pause) So anyway – my husband remarried. He had two kids in two years with his new wife. We never spoke again.