If it hadn’t been Norma McCorvey, it would have been someone else. The point was not the person but the principle.
That about sums up the response of abortion-rights defenders to the recent announcement that McCorvey, “Jane Roe” of the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion, had been baptized and gone to work for Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion organization.
It’s an entirely sensible, appropriate response. Roe vs. Wade was a class action, and the named plaintiffs in such cases are always representatives of a group, important less as individuals than as symbols.
Unfortunately for the abortion-rights folks, McCorvey just didn’t get it. She thought she really ought to count for something, that the leaders of the abortion-rights movement ought to have made a bigger place for her in their councils and their campaigns.
As a result, she now has become a symbol for the opponents of abortion. Her baptism, in a swimming pool at a Dallas residence, has been filmed and shown on national TV, along with an interview in which she averred: “I think abortion’s wrong. I think what I did with Roe vs. Wade was wrong. I just have to be pro-life.”
Well, sort of. She still thinks women ought to have the option to abort during the first trimester of pregnancy. So her utility as a symbol for the pro-life movement is dubious at best.
That probably is a blessing. Because the impression one gets, on listening to Norma McCorvey and hearing the sad, often sordid details of her life, is that she is a person who has been used her entire life–and usually badly.
What she seems to desire, more than fame or anything else, is for someone to give her unconditional love and acceptance. The last place to find that–assuming it can be found this side of the grave–is in the political arena, where the abortion wars continue to be fought.
Let us all hope, and even pray, that Norma McCorvey in her new life may find peace of mind and rest from the accidental burden of being Jane Roe.
