From the Philadelphia Daily News, Joey's wife aborted lover's kid.

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WANNABE mobster Billy Rinick dropped a bombshell at his murder trial yesterday, testifying that he drove the wife of jailed mob boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino to Maryland so she could abort the lovechild of her affair with a New York football player.

The "did-he-really-say-that?" silence in Common Pleas Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan's courtroom was deafening.

Accounting for his whereabouts hours before the slaying of Adam Finelli, Rinick revealed that what he had previously described as driving Deborah Merlino to and from Maryland for "some surgery" had been, in fact, for an abortion she needed after "cheating on her husband."

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Remember the girl that Sonny Corleone is doing the deed with in the opening scenes of The Godfather?

In the novel, she ends up in Las Vegas where she becomes the girlfriend of an abortionist. This is a man who lost his medical license (presumably for supplying abortions--this is prior to 1973) who then heads west to become the man who keeps Mob show girls in business. He is generally portrayed as a sympathetic character.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he is portrayed as part of the Las Vegas wallpaper. It's a nice piece of verisimilitude.

This reminds me of the marvelous scene at the end of "Godfather II" where Kaye (Diane Keaton) realizes that there is in fact something she can say to Michael so that he will accept the dissolution of their marriage.

"It was an abortion, Michael! IT. WAS. AN. ABORTION."

Update: See the comments box for the Correct Quote, courtesy of The Raving Atheist.