Billed as the “pro-life event of the year,” Arkansas Right to Life hosted a presentation with the woman behind the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Norma McCorvey, 64, of Texas spoke to about 100 pro-life supporters at St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock Oct. 8.
McCorvey, who spoke during a 50-minute interview-style event, said she was initially was not someone who wanted to push for abortions to be legal in all nine months in the United States. She eventually worked at four abortions clinics, supporting women who wanted to get an abortion, but later returned to her Christian roots and converted to Catholicism in 1998. Today she speaks around the country about her experiences based on her two books, “I Am Roe” and “Won by Love.”
McCorvey was a pregnant 22-year-old woman in 1969 when she was introduced to two young female lawyers who wanted to challenge the Texas abortion ban. McCorvey agreed, but she never got the abortion she was seeking. After visiting an illegal abortion clinic and finding out it was shut down, she gave birth to her daughter and gave her up for adoption. The lawyers, one of whom had her own abortion, did not help McCorvey get an illegal abortion because that decision would ruin their case, she said.
As the plaintiff in the landmark case, McCorvey chose the pseudonym Jane Roe and was not present during the proceedings before the Texas court or U.S. Supreme Court. She ironically found out about the case the morning after the Jan. 22, 1973, court decision by reading it in the newspaper.
“It didn’t help me,” McCorvey said of the court’s decision. “I was ashamed to think I was part of something that would kill half of America.”
“It was pretty gruesome,” she said of her time working at abortion clinics, describing a “parts room” where the nurses collected the aborted babies’ arms and legs to make sure they were accounted for.
“After a while you get so callous; you just think it is a pile of wood,” she said.
Around 1995 she was befriended by a girl named Emily who was outside the abortion clinic praying with her mother. Emily invited McCorvey to church with her, which led her to eventually return to the Christian faith.
“I really didn’t like what I was doing, but it was a job,” she said.
McCorvey left the abortion industry and started to work for Operation Rescue, which was located next door to the clinic.
She entered full Communion with the Catholic Church in 1998 in Dallas.
McCorvey said she doesn’t believe any legal changes will ever make abortion disappear in this country.
“You aren’t going to stop women from doing what they want to do,” she said.
But she encouraged the audience members to volunteer and donate to crisis pregnancy centers to reach out to women in need.
At the end of the program, Marianne Linane, diocesan respect life director, presented Arkansas Right to Life’s Mary Rose Doe Award to Maria Maldonado, a sidewalk helper who regularly counsels women outside the Little Rock abortion clinic. Maldonado, a second-grade teacher at Christ the King School, has supported countless pregnant women who didn’t want to get abortion and even threw them baby showers. Maldonado was the former director and president of St. Joseph Helpers, a pregnancy resource center across the street from the clinic.
“I still don’t feel that I am worthy,” Maldonado said, accepting the award. “I hope not to let God down.”
As a teacher, Maldonado said praying outside the abortion clinic every week has even more meaning.
“I see a whole classroom die every Saturday,” she said. “Look at all these children dying. Soon we will have less and less children in the desks.”
