Pro-Abortion Documentary “AKA Jane Roe” Falsely Claims Norma McCorvey Wasn’t Truly Pro-Life

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 19, 2020   |   3:09PM   |   Washington, DC

No name is more closely associated with abortion than Jane Roe, the anonymous name behind the Supreme Court decision that overturned pro-life laws nationwide and ushered in an era of legalized abortion on demand that has claimed the lives of over 61 million babies since 1973.

Norma McCorvey, the former Jane Roe of the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, never obtained an abortion. She wanted a divorce from her husband at the time but was exploited by feminist attorneys to push their case to upend Texas’ pro-life laws.

Now it looks like pro-abortion feminists are exploiting her again.

Decades after the Supreme Court invented the right to abortion using her case, McCorvey converted to the pro-life position after spending years supporting abortion and even working a ta local abortion clinic. And for decades more, she supported pro-life efforts and worked closely with pro-life groups.

As she explained in 2012: “I’m Norma McCorvey, the former Jane Roe of the Roe vs. Wade decision that brought ‘legal’ child killing to America. I was persuaded by feminist attorneys to lie; to say that I was raped, and needed an abortion. It was all a lie. Since then, over 50 million babies have been murdered. I will take this burden to my grave.”

Now, beyond the grave — years after her death — abortion activists are resorting to revisionist history to make it appear that not only was McCorvey not pro-life but making the baseless accusation that pro-life groups paid her to recant her support for abortion.

A new documentary film AKA Jane Roe 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 writes:

“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 publicly.

In a video before her death, McCorvey explained her effort to obtain a legal abortion in the 1970s when facing an unplanned pregnancy. However, she never had an abortion and realized that her court case was the biggest mistake of her life.

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“Back in 1973, I was a very confused twenty-one year old with one child and facing an unplanned pregnancy,” she says in the ad. “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,” McCorvey says.

She concluded the 60 second ad with the words: “You read about me in history books, but now I am dedicated to spreading the truth about preserving the dignity of all human life from natural conception to natural death.”

Whether McCorvey is telling the truth or has been coerced and used by abortion advocates looking to undermine the pro-life movement is a very real question. There’s significant doubt about the veracity of a so-called “deathbed confessional” if only because Norma was consistently pro-life for decades but publicly and privately.

While its clear abortion activists exploited a frail and broken McCorvey with a last-minute interview to further their agenda, what’s also very clear to everyone who personally knew Norma over the years is that she was totally and genuinely pro-life. In private email exchanges to this author over the years prior to her death, she never vacillated from her pro-life views and repeatedly thanked LifeNews for standing up for unborn babies.

Father Frank Pavone spent many years with McCorvey and personally facilitated her conversion to become a Catholic. He says the Norma presented in the documentary and pro-abortion articles about it is vastly different from the woman he knew.

“One would think that any normal or honest person who wants to understand the journey of Norma McCorvey would talk with those who journeyed with her. I knew her and was one of her key spiritual guides for 22 years, starting in 1995 with her baptism, right through the conversation we had on the day she died,” he told LifeNews. “Yes, she not only rejected abortion, but she became a new creation in Christ. I received her into the Catholic Church and rejoiced together with her as she discovered day by day the joy of prayer, and in her final years made rosaries by hand to help others experience that same joy. Her desire to protect children in the womb was no act.”

“I was privileged to lead and preach at her funeral. I knew her struggles and her pain. She didn’t just have positions; she had deep wounds because of her involvement with Roe vs. Wade, and I guided her through the healing of those wounds, in the quiet hours of struggle that nobody saw or heard about. Those are things you don’t fake,” Pavone added.

He concluded: “There have always been people who have tried to re-shape her story, or get her to reshape it. She resented that and would resent it today. Norma was not somebody you could come to know in a snapshot, in an interview, or even in years of interviews. I’ll have a lot more to say about this once I see the documentary.”

Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, also knew Norma personally and attested to the consistency of her pro-life beliefs.

“Norma always spoke with passion about her pro-life convictions, which represented a huge and public shift from how she had been seen for so long,” Hawkins shared with LifeNews. “I believe the woman that I personally knew who lived a painful and complicated life, but spoke directly about how she felt about it.”

Hawkins believes the documentary is little more than an effort to use a damaged elderly woman for political gain.

“And I also don’t believe that Fx is a good actor, when you consider that earlier this year, they went after the iconic Phyllis Schlafly. Tearing down pro-life champions won’t work for those of us who have had the privilege of knowing the real people behind the headlines.”