Brain Disease Victim Undergoes Abortion : Parents Authorize Procedure for Stricken Daughter, Say Action May Save Her From Death

The parents of Laura Eldridge said their mentally incapacitated daughter, who was found during a routine X-ray to be five months pregnant, underwent an abortion procedure late Monday at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Eldridge’s mother and stepfather, Helen and Tom Stegmoyer of Fountain Valley, said in an interview that the procedure began about 5 p.m. Monday. The results will not be known for 12 to 36 hours, they said.

“I have mixed emotions,” Helen Stegmoyer said. “I’m happy it’s started now, and the attorneys and doctors and hospital staff have been wonderful.”

She said it was a very painful procedure that induces labor and delivery. She said she did not know whether her daughter would survive. But she said that she and her husband decided to go through with the abortion primarily because doctors had told them that carrying the baby to full term might kill their daughter. Despite the risks, doctors had told them that an abortion now would be safer, the parents said.

Hospital spokesmen were not available to comment.

The once-vivacious Eldridge, 35, now a frail 75 pounds, has been ravaged by a brain disease that has left her conscious but unable to communicate for the past year--a year spent, for the most part, in a fetal position in the Mirada Hills Convalescent and Rehabilitation Hospital in La Mirada.

Her family claims it was in that facility that she was raped by an unknown assailant, probably while her hands were tied down to stop her from pulling tubes and needles out of her body.

Criminal and regulatory investigations have been launched, and Mirada Hills submitted a plan Monday to Los Angeles Health Department officials to correct alleged deficiencies by implementing new procedures.

The case has stirred controversy among state and national anti-abortion groups and raised questions about parents’ legal ability to order an abortion for an incapacitated child.

The Stegmoyers said that while they ordinarily oppose abortion, they have always made an exception in cases involving rape, incest and cases in which the mother’s health is endangered.

Eldridge was admitted to UCI Medical Center at 10:50 a.m. Monday and began undergoing a battery of tests to determine the age of the fetus and the mother’s general health condition, said hospital spokeswoman Mary Kay Fitzgerald.

An anti-abortion group, The California Pro-Life Council, had said earlier Monday that it might try to block a move to abort the fetus if there was time to act. The council had offered to find a home for the infant, he said.

“It’s a question of justice,” said Edward Jamison, past president of the council, who was spearheading opposition to the planned abortion.

“The child’s father committed a crime, but the baby has to pay for it with his life,” Jamison said. “The child has committed no crime. It’s completely innocent . . . . If the baby dies (in birth), it’s God’s will.”

Jamison could not be reached late Monday.

About four years ago, newly divorced Laura Eldridge began forgetting things. Her whole personality seemed to change, her mother said. At first, the family thought the divorce was affecting her, she said. Then they realized it was a physical ailment.

Eldridge went into hospitals and convalescent homes, suffering from what some doctors diagnosed as Huntington’s chorea, a fatal hereditary illness. But other doctors, including one who has been treating her for the last year, are not sure what has caused the neurological disease.

“She either has a brain injury or other neurological disorder,” Dr. Teodora Bonuam, her physician for the last year, said in a court statement. “She is incompetent and does not know what is happening to her at all.”

Last week, Eldridge was transferred to Norwalk Community Hospital because a feeding tube became dislodged in her body. X-rays revealed that she was pregnant and ultrasound tests put the age of the fetus at 20 weeks, according to court records and testimony.

“She was restrained at least for the last 20 weeks and for most of the year,” said Eldridge’s sister, Donna Davis.

Sexual Abuse

Terming the pregnancy the result of sexual abuse, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department started a joint investigation, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Leland B. Harris, who acknowledged that the probe will be “extremely difficult.” The only evidence investigators will likely have, he said, will be the fetus and blood and tissue samples.

On Friday, the state Department of Health Services imposed a $5,000 fine and cited the Mirada Hills care home for a Class A violation--the most serious citation possible in a state-licensed facility for a violation where no death is involved.

“It’s pretty serious, and it was a direct result of the Eldridge case,” said Marvin Brandon of the Los Angeles County Health Services Department, which handles state nursing home licensing in Los Angeles County on a contract basis.

Brandon said the health department is continuing its investigation and closure of the facility “is a possibility. I can’t speculate further because I don’t have the information back from everything we’re still investigating.”

Paul Keller, chief of the state department’s field operations branch in Sacramento, said state health officials found that the facility had violated regulations “that provide that a patient should be provided a safe environment, and their rights should be protected.”

The convalescent home has the right to an administrative review of the citation, or it can seek a final determination in Superior Court.

52 Deficiencies Alleged

In its annual review of the Mirada Hills care home last year, health department officials identified 52 deficiencies, many of them in standards for patient care, though it found no deficiencies in actual conditions at the nursing home, according to Callie Torrence, assistant supervisor for the health department’s east district.

Robert J. Gerst, attorney for the Mirada Hills care home, said the hospital is conducting an investigation now to determine whether Eldridge was actually in the facility when the alleged rape occurred.

“There seems to be some indication that several months ago she may have been transferred, maybe more than one time, to take care of medical problems,” he said.

The facility also is talking to every employee who has worked there in the last six months, he said. “It could be anybody, a patient, a visitor, a guest.”

There are no locks on the doors of patients’ rooms because “it’s against regulations,” he said.

Gerst claimed the deficiencies identified by the state were inspection reports that routinely list 20 to 30 violations of some 600 regulations that nursing homes must follow. The deficiencies, he said, did not include any adverse patient care.