Brain-Diseased Woman Leaves Medical Center After Abortion

Laura Eldridge, a severely brain-diseased patient who became pregnant after being raped, has been released from the UCI Medical Center after receiving an abortion there, her attorney said Wednesday.

Dick Runels said that Eldridge was moved Saturday to a convalescent home in Los Angeles County after being discharged from the medical center in Orange. He did not identify the convalescent home.

Runels said the 35-year-old woman suffered no physical setback from the abortion. “From the standpoint of obstetrics, she appears to be fine,” he said.

Eldridge received an abortion June 25 after Orange County Superior Court Judge Henry T. Moore ruled that her pregnancy was life-threatening and named her parents as conservators.

The state Department of Health Services has charged that Eldridge was raped while under care at another convalescent home in Los Angeles County. Runels said Wednesday that the state will hold a hearing in Sacramento next week on the matter, “and I’ll be up there.”

Eldridge, who once led a normal life and is the mother of an 11-year-old son, suffers a neurological disease that some doctors have tentatively diagnosed as Huntington’s chorea. Last month, when she was taken to a hospital in Norwalk for X-rays because a feeding tube had become dislodged, doctors discovered that she was about 20 weeks pregnant.