LIFE DIGEST: Actress Neal dies, became pro-life after early abortion
- Aug 10, 2010 -
Patricia Neal, Academy Award-winning actress who had an abortion as a young woman and later became a pro-life advocate, died Aug. 8.
Neal, only 23 at the time, aborted a child conceived during an affair with married, veteran actor Gary Cooper, with whom she starred in the 1949 movie “The Fountainhead,” according to the original obituary in The New York Times. Cooper reportedly persuaded her to have the abortion.
Also in this edition: Bill would bar funds for abortion in health-care law and Parents sue because Down syndrome not detected.
She said in her 1988 autobiography, As I Am, she cried herself to sleep for 30 years afterward. “If I had only one thing to do over in my life,” she wrote, The Times reported, “I would have that baby.”
Neal returned to Roman Catholicism and expressed her pro-life views openly. She served as an honorary chairwoman of the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund’s Proudly Pro-Life Awards Dinner in 2003.
At the dinner, James Lisante, a Catholic priest and friend of Neal, told the audience, “Patricia Neal has put herself on the line in saying to many, many women who have experienced abortion or thought about abortion, ‘Don’t make my mistake. Let your baby live.’”
Neal, 84 at the time of her death from lung cancer, was named best actress for her role in the 1963 movie “Hud.” She overcame a series of strokes while she was pregnant with her fifth child by husband Roald Dahl in 1965 to return to acting. Their fifth child was born though Neal was in a coma during part of her pregnancy.
Bill would bar funds for abortion in health-care law
Sen. Tom Coburn, R.-Okla., has introduced a bill to bar federal funds from being used to pay for abortions under the health-care law enacted in March.
Introduced Aug. 5, the Excluding Abortion Coverage From Health Reform Act will prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding elective abortions or subsidizing coverage for such abortions. Pro-lifers opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) because it subsidizes abortion coverage in health-care plans.
“Forcing Americans to pay for abortion services with their own dollars is a grave abuse of government authority,” Coburn said in a written statement. “The administration’s track record of ambiguity in this area underscores the need for federal legislation clarifying, once and for all, that public funds will not be used to pay for abortion services under the new health law.”
Coburn’s bill has 24 cosponsors.
Rep. Joe Pitts, R.-Pa., has introduced a similar bill, H.R. 5111, in the House of Representatives. His bill has 121 cosponsors.
Parents sue because Down syndrome not detected
Two Australian couples have sued doctors because they failed to detect Down syndrome in their unborn babies and thereby prevented them from aborting those children.
The couples, both residents of the state of Victoria, are seeking damages for financial loss, the expenses of caring for their children and “psychiatric injury,” according to The Herald Sun, a Melbourne newspaper.
One of the children is 5 years old, and the other is 2. The 5-year-old, who is in a special kindergarten class, has congenital heart, kidney and thyroid problems; is unable to walk, and cannot feed herself, her father said, The Herald Sun reported.
In her parents’ claim, they said, “Had the presence of Down syndrome been diagnosed at the time of the first trimester ultrasound and/or at the time of the second trimester ultrasound, a time frame which permitted the termination of the pregnancy, then the (mother) would have terminated the pregnancy.”
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