Pro-life advocates who personally knew Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, believe that her conversion to the pro-life movement and Christianity was sincere.
For years, McCorvey worked and volunteered alongside pro-lifers to reverse the infamous ruling that abortion activists manipulated her into participating in. Some pro-life leaders even developed life-long friendships with her.
But now, years after McCorvey’s death, abortion activists are accusing pro-life advocates of using her. The accusations are based on comments McCorvey made in an up-coming documentary film “AKA Jane Roe” by liberal activist Nick Sweeney.
The film features an interview with an elderly and frail McCorvey just before her death. Although the full, unedited version has not been released, the documentary purportedly shows McCorvey making some stunning claims. As the pro-abortion Daily Beast reports:
“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.”
“Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. “Well,” says McCorvey, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”
This is unlike what McCorvey said both publicly and privately.
Cheryl Sullenger, a leader with Operation Rescue and a personal friend of McCorvey’s for years, slammed the report as “fake news.”
“I knew Norma personally and saw her during unguarded moments,” Sullenger told LifeNews.com. “Norma was frank, and if she was in a mood, she could say things that were controversial. But never did she ever show any hint of being anything other than 100-percent pro-life as long as I knew her. This latest attack on her pro-life beliefs is nothing but out-of-context fake news.”
Lauren Muzyka, executive director of Sidewalk Advocates for Life, said she also saw McCorvey living out her pro-life beliefs, without any hint of coercion or personal gain.
“Just before Norma died, I prayed with her on the sidewalk in front of the Southwestern abortion facility in Dallas to close out the 40 Days for Life-Dallas campaign that fall,” Muzyka said. “Norma was good friends with many of my friends in the area, and there was never any question about the fact that she was pro-life. In fact, friends from our pro-life community in Dallas spent significant time with her just before she died.”
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McCorvey died in 2017 after spending decades trying to protect unborn babies from abortion.
“Back in 1973, I was a very confused twenty-one year old with one child and facing an unplanned pregnancy,” McCorvey said in 2013. “At the time I fought to obtain a legal abortion, but truth be told, I have three daughters and never had an abortion.
“I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie…. I am dedicated to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name,” she continued.
In 1998, she told the U.S. Senate that Roe v. Wade was based on a lie:
“My name is Norma McCorvey. I’m sorry to admit that I’m the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade. The affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court didn’t happen the way I said it did, pure and simple. I lied! Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffey needed an extreme case to make their client look pitiable. Rape seemed to be the ticket. What made rape even worse? A gang rape! It all started out as a little lie, but my little lie grew and became more horrible with each telling.”
She wrote about her conversion in a book “Won By Love” and described how abortion activists used her to advance their agenda. She said her pro-abortion lawyers only met with her twice, once for pizza and beer and a second time to sign an affidavit. McCorvey said she did not even read it.
Before becoming pro-life, McCorvey worked at an abortion facility. She later described the experience:
“Please understand, these were not abnormal, uncaring women working with me at the clinic. We were just involved in a bloody, dehumanizing business, all of us for our own reasons. Whether we were justifying our past advocacy (as I was), justifying a previous abortion (as many were) or whatever, we were just trying to cope–and if we couldn’t laugh at what was going on, I think our minds would have snapped. It’s not an easy thing trying to confuse a conscience that will not stay dead.”
McCorvey never wanted an abortion — she was seeking a divorce from her husband — but young, pro-abortion feminist attorney Sarah Weddington used McCorvey’s case as a means of attempting to overturn Texas’ law making most abortions illegal. Weddington took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which invalidated every pro-life state law in the nation and allowed abortion on demand up to birth.
In 2005, McCorvey petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The courts, however, denied her petition.
