Patricia Heaton Stirs More Controversy on A&E "Biography"

Two-time Emmy winner and Feminists for Life of America Honorary Chair Patricia Heaton was profiled Tuesday, April 1 on A&E during “Primetime Women Week” on Biography.

Displaying the Feminists for Life website where Heaton appears in an ad stating, "Refuse to choose. Women deserve better," the hour-long Biography noted that she was "a celebrity who's not afraid of stirring up controversy whether the subject is politics, morality or herself." In her work with Feminists for Life of America, "Heaton uses her fame, for instance, as a platform to campaign against abortion."

Patricia Heaton is best known for her role as Debra in the hit CBS comedy, "Everybody Loves Raymond," for which she has been recognized by her peers with back-to-back Emmys for Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role in a Comedy Series.

Her book, How to Get a Job Like Mine in Hollywood, which has just gone paperback, has made her a New York Times best selling author.

In real life Heaton is also the wife and mother of four beautiful boys. Heaton told Biography that her son Sam and the 3 boys that followed turned her into a better actress: "When I had kids, they took away all my free time, but they gave me tons of emotional life that I had never experienced before. Things came much more naturally to me, and I feel that my work loosened up and filled out because I had these other people in my life who were showing me a whole new way to live."

When Heaton received the first of her two Emmys in 2000, she began with gratitude to her own mother. "I just want to thank God for thinking me up and my mother for letting me come out, because life is really amazing!"

By the year 2000, she was one of the most recognizable stars on television. She was being compared to some of the greatest actresses who'd ever been on television: "Audrey Meadows, Mary Tyler Moore. That's a good league to be in, don't you think?" asks Phillip Rosenthal, executive producer for "Everybody Loves Raymond."

"She is also in league with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other trailblazing women who refused to choose between women and unborn children," said FFL President Serrin Foster. Feminists for Life continues the tradition of the early American Feminists who opposed abortion because of their belief in the worth of all human beings.

"I feel like everybody has the right to life according to the Constitution," Heaton is pictured saying to an audience this past November at UCLA, as FFL President Serrin Foster, at her side, cheers her on with a resounding "Yes!" Heaton describes how she finds the courage to hold a position unpopular in her profession by explaining: "At the end of the day, I believe I have to answer to God for the actions in my life, the actions that I took and the actions that I didn't take. So that's scarier to me than somebody in the Hollywood community not liking me."

"It's not the sort of stance you usually hear from stars in Hollywood," notes Biography.

But it is a stance you will hear more and more. Actor Margaret Colin, noted for her roles in "Independence Day" and "Three Men and a Baby," who serves as Honorary Co-chair, was pictured by her side along with Serrin Foster after a White House press briefing on human cloning by President Bush.

"Patricia's stands are unusual for Hollywood. In a town where people obsessively chase fame, where she worked for years to achieve it herself, Patricia Heaton said if her career ever dries up, she will walk away with no regrets," notes Biography.