Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

Actress Patricia Neal died Sunday from lung cancer, at her Martha's Vineyard home.  Neal was in  Hud, with Paul Newman, and the Fountainhead with Gary Cooper along with a bunch of other movies.

This New York Times article  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/movies/09neal.html surprised me by mentioning an abortion she had as a result of an affair with Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper was married at the time and pressured her to end the pregnancy.

"During her affair with Cooper she became pregnant and had an abortion,
according to the autobiography “As I Am” (1988), written with Richard
DeNeut. “If I had only one thing to do over in my life,” she wrote, “I
would have that baby.”Eager to have children, she married Dahl in 1953,
even though she did not love him then, she wrote in her autobiography. A
former R.A.F. fighter pilot who became a renowned writer of often
darkly humorous children’s books (“James and the Giant Peach,”“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”),
Dahl took control of Ms. Neal’s life. After their four-month-old son,
Theo, was left brain-damaged when his pram was crushed between a taxicab
and a bus on a New York street in December 1960, Dahl decided that they
would move to the village of Great Missenden in England. Two years
later, their eldest daughter, Olivia, who was 7, died of measles
encephalitis, perhaps for want of sophisticated medical care that would
have been available in a big city."

 I felt a camaraderie with her when I read the article as I am sure many others who are post abortive felt, because I could identify with the pain and suffering she endured in life as a result of her abortion. Like many post abortive women she was looking for her atonement baby and rushed into a marriage without love. Then she endured the death of two living children.You can only imagine her guilt or the sense of being punished she must have had when her two living children died. I can only pray she found God's peace and forgiveness in the years that followed.

I wasn't very familiar with Patricia Neal but I am proud of her for speaking up about her abortion.

May she rest in peace.

update:

just found this piece about her…I did not know she was good friends with Msgr James Lisante, a priest in the Rockville Diocese here in NY. http://the-american-catholic.com/2010/08/10/pro-life-actress-patricia-neal-dies-at-84/

I am happy to hear she came back to her Catholic faith I found this part of the American Catholic article quoting  Msgr, very moving:

She said, “Father, alone in
the night for over 40 years, I have cried for my child. And if there is
one thing I wish I had the courage to do over in my life, I wish I had
the courage to have that baby.”"
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.” What’s particularly painful, but poignant in this
story is that some years later, Patricia became good friends with Maria
Cooper, the only child of Gary Cooper and his wife. And Maria Cooper
said, “You know, I know you had the affair with my father and I have
long ago forgiven that. But one thing I find it hard to accept is that
as an only child, I so wish that you’d had my brother or my sister.
Because in so many ways, I wish so much that you had chosen life.”

Maria Cooper, the daughter of Gary
Cooper, publicly spat ( good for her!) at Patricia Neal while she was
having her affair with Cooper.  Ironically it was Maria who helped
lead Patricia Neal back to the Faith.  Maria, after the affair was over
and Cooper returned to his family after years of estrangement,  and her
mother helped lead Gary Cooper to convert to Catholicism, something I
will explore in the long delayed third part of my series on
Sergeant York and Gary Cooper.  As long as there is life, there is
always hope for we sinners.

Amen.