‘Roe’ Used By One Side Or The Other
The life of a symbol is a deceptively simple life. In exchange for a place in history, you need only surrender that slice of yourself that serves the purpose of “the cause.”
Through just such selective editing, the poster girl of the national abortion rights movement is being repackaged as a crusader in the anti-abortion army.
With an Operation Rescue baptism in a suburban Dallas swimming pool, we are told, the woman whose efforts to end her unwanted pregnancy led to the legalization of abortion exchanged her pro-choice button for a pro-life placard.
Lost, of course, in the symbolism of her sudden conversion is the flesh-and-blood Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff more widely known as “Jane Roe” of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision.
The anti-abortion crowd should be forewarned: The role of symbol never has been a very comfortable fit for McCorvey.
Not in 1969 when two young Texas lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, recruited the pregnant 20-year-old alcoholic and drug abuser to be their anonymous plaintiff in a class action challenging a 100-year-old state abortion statute.
Not in 1980 when “Jane Roe” impulsively revealed her true identity to a Dallas newscaster because they both had been born under the same astrological sign.
Not in 1987 when she admitted lying about the circumstances of her historic pregnancy, a pregnancy that ended not in abortion but in adoption in 1970 while Roe vs. Wade was making its way to the nation’s highest court. She had not been raped, as she originally had claimed, but simply had failed to use birth control with a lover.
And certainly not in 1989, when a Missouri abortion case that could have overturned Roe vs. Wade arrived at the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court. The seeds of McCorvey’s defection might have been sown on a chilly April afternoon that year when “Jane Roe” had to push her way onto a Washington platform at the largest abortion rights demonstration in American history.
Where exactly does a chronically depressed former carnival barker/cleaning woman/bartender/ file clerk stand at a nationally televised National Organization for Women rally? Between Jane Fonda and Judy Collins? Or behind Cybill Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg?
There was no touch of irony in her voice when Kate Michelman, longtime national abortion rights lobbyist, expressed concern that, now, Norma McCorvey is “being used” by the anti-abortion side of this divisive debate.
Of course, she is being used - just as she has been used for the last 15 years by Michelman and her allies.
It is a national disease, this mania to turn complicated human beings into one-dimensional symbols. Even as we analyze the political implications of McCorvey’s conversion, we are eulogizing a rock ‘n’ roll guitarist whose life, we are told, represented pure joy and unfettered freedom.
One suspects that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who died a 53-year-old heroin addict alone in a single room in a California drug rehabilitation clinic, knew better.
Sarah Weddington, who argued Roe before the high court, was more candid in her assessment of McCorvey’s change of heart on abortion. Weddington made it clear who she believes is most impacted by this conversion - and it is not her former client.
“At a time when we are working so hard to campaign for people who are pro-choice and not having much luck, I didn’t need this,” she huffed. “I’m certainly sorry she gave the opposition a tool to use against the case.”
Sarah Weddington should relax. Anti-abortion activists might get some immediate use from their shiny new tool, but the complexities and the ambiguities of Norma McCorvey’s real life will surface soon, as they surface more privately for us all.
In embracing its new symbol, will Operation Rescue edit out Norma McCorvey’s refusal to disavow a woman’s right to first-trimester abortions, just as those who send John C. Salvi Jr. fan mail in jail ignore his unrelated rantings about the gold standard and an international conspiracy against Catholics?
Will the anti-abortion movement welcome Connie Gonzales, Norma McCorvey’s longtime lesbian lover, at rallies in its fundamentalist Christian churches? Or will this side, too, become uncomfortable with a symbol made of flesh and blood and slowly but quietly move Norma McCorvey and all her complexities to the back of the platform?
Perhaps McCorvey said it best herself six years ago while she waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it would overturn Roe vs. Wade.
“More and more, I’m the issue,” the reluctant icon told a reporter. “I don’t know if I should be the issue. Abortion is the issue, and I’ve never had an abortion.”
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