WICKED ALIAS --- AKA: Norma McCorvey

Barbara Ward-Finneran

What a wicked position to find yourself in.  To realize that what you wanted and or did in your early twenties would have lifetime ramifications.  Not only for you personally, but for your entire country.  

How many of us can look back on decisions that we made early on in our adult life that we now know we would not choose again.  Can you imagine the wicked fallout if your choices changed not only you forever but also the world?  Not many have the wisdom at such a young and raw age to make life altering choices without realizing the long term ramifications.  Much less have them lay history making consequences. 

Norma McCorvey made such decisions when she was just 21.  Now almost 30 years later, she works to promote life and change. 

Norma McCorvey recently filed a motion in Texas to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case in which she was the litigant in 1973.  Additionally she has started Roe No More Ministry where it is her objective to be the voice for the voiceless.  The voice for the unborn.  Her alias, Jane Roe, is reveled by those who call themselves "pro-choice" and the repercussions of that case have been debated countless times in the nearly 30 years since the Supreme Court decision.  

In recent interviews, Norma now states that she was used by pro abortion attorneys in their zeal to legalize the procedure. At the age of twenty-one Norma was pregnant.  She had previously given up two children for adoption and longed not to say goodbye to a third.  She decided to seek an illegal abortion but the clinic she went to had been raided and shut down.  She then made up a story, saying that she was raped.  Telling her doctor and two lawyers.  She signed an affidavit on condition of anonymity, and the lawsuit began.

In a 1994 New York Times interview, Norma describes her meetings with the lawyers: "Sarah (Weddington) sat right across the table from me at Columbo's pizza parlor, and I didn't know [then] that she had had an abortion herself," she said. "When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn't because she needed me to be pregnant for her case. I set Sarah Weddington up on a pedestal like a rose petal. But when it came to my turn, well, Sarah saw these cuts on my wrists, my swollen eyes from crying, the miserable person sitting across from her, and she knew she had a patsy. She knew I wouldn't go outside of the realm of her and Linda. I was too scared. It was one of the most hideous times of my life."

Norma had a short lived teenage marriage.  She speaks of growing up poor and feeling unloved.  She was educated through 9th grade  and was a drug and alcohol abuser.  While waiting for the trial she took on odd jobs as it progressed up the judicial ladder.  She was told she didn't need to be there.  It was only AFTER 1973, after the decision, that she began to understand the ramifications of the case.  By that time, McCorvey's third child was 2 years old. McCorvey never had, nor has she ever had, an abortion. 

In 1980 she broke her silence and began giving interviews, eventually revealing that she lied about the rape --- an important fact in the Row Vs. Wade case.  She became a pro abortion advocate and speaker and wallowed in depression about her lies.  She made several attempts at suicide before receiving psychiatric help.  She credits encounters with Pastor Phillip 'Flip' Benham and two young girls with her conversion.   One of whom told her how she was to have been aborted. 

Now a Christian, a Catholic, who is Pro -Life, her ministry's  mission is that it, "strives to network pro-life speakers throughout the nation in order to provide a base of educational and informational speakers and presenters for organizations who wish to promote the sanctity of human life and the message of love and forgiveness."  Her main focus now is convincing people that abortion is wrong.


I have comforted friends on both sides of this fence, it is not for me to judge.  Equally pained knowing a woman who in the aftermath I held while she cried and who still fights to forgive herself and, on the other side, another haunted memory of knowing a man who wept because it was his wife's choice and despite his beliefs and desires, he had no choice, his was taken away.  

Reading this knowing you are "Pro-Life" or "Pro-Choice" may stir some to research more. It might make you ponder what you thought in your twenties, before marriage, before maturity, before kids and wonder if perhaps your views have changed.  Perhaps you know with uncertainty that they have or maybe it's still rock solid for you.  

Is Norma a "hero" or a "hypocrite'?

Would you have wanted what you thought then, to still affect countless lives now?  

Would you be brave enough to publicly "right the wrong" if you felt that was so? 

Does what you thought then, still affect you now?