Abortion Foes See Boon in ‘Jane Roe’s’ Switch

When Operation Rescue opened an office in Dallas next door to the abortion clinic where Norma McCorvey worked, the woman who had by then become the symbol of the abortion-rights movement took to taunting Operation Rescue’s leader, the Rev. Flip Benham, with insults and gallows humor.

“Hey Flip, I’ve been over here killing babies all day,” Benham’s co-workers remember her saying to the minister, a former bartender and recovering alcoholic who is now a chief spokesman for the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. “Ya got any new recipes for Manhattans?”

Now McCorvey--once the anonymous plaintiff “Jane Roe” in the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing abortion rights--has been baptized by Benham and renounced her work on behalf of abortion rights.

And Operation Rescue, long known for its vociferous demonstrations outside abortion clinics, could be perceived in a new light in the wake of McCorvey’s conversion.

McCorvey’s change of heart represents “a devastating moment for the pro-abortion movement,” said Ralph Reed, executive director of the conservative Christian Coalition. “You cannot overestimate the symbolic significance of this.”

Ironically, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion rights came after McCorvey--who had been unable to obtain a legal abortion while the case dragged on--gave birth to the child she had not wanted, and ultimately gave up for adoption.

“The irony is Norma McCorvey never had an abortion, but she has spent her whole life involved with the abortion movement,” said Helen Alvare, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

“The primary significance for this is to Norma herself and it points up the unfailing kindness of Flip Benham in the face of her taunts.”

McCorvey announced last week that while she still supports a woman’s right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, she no longer believes in abortion on demand. And she hopes the prayers of Operation Rescue members for her spiritual rebirth will allow her to “come full circle and say that abortion is no longer right for anyone.”

“Once you know the realities of an abortion and what goes along with it, it stays with you,” McCorvey said last week.

When she announced her change of heart, McCorvey accused the abortion-rights camp of taking little interest in her personally over the years, and some say that may have influenced her to switch allegiance in the abortion debate.

“Abortion-rights advocates will characterize the kindness of Flip Benham as an insidious tool used to manipulate a confused woman,” said Alvare. “But . . . the pro-life movement really turns not on the conversion of poster children like Norma McCorvey but on its ability to elicit peoples’ natural sympathy for the vulnerable child.

“If Ms. McCorvey is able to take down some of the barriers some people have to the anti-abortion movement, that may open doors.”

Leaders in Christian anti-abortion circles applauded McCorvey’s decision to switch, although there was debate over how great an impact her move would have on the anti-abortion movement generally.

Michele Arocha Allen, spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, D.C., said she hopes McCorvey’s transition will help educate people about abortion at a time when its realities are “covered up by rhetoric.”

“More than any other person, Ms. McCorvey has symbolized legal abortion in America, and I think it’s very heartening to see someone like her come into the same realization that many other Americans have come to, once they are educated about abortion,” Allen said. But the Rev. C. Ben Mitchell, a medical ethicist and consultant to the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, said, “What one person may do, as delightful [as] it is, in our view, probably isn’t going to . . . change the law. We still have much to do to change the law.”

Besides the potential impact of McCorvey’s conversion, the depth of her commitment to the anti-abortion cause was still unclear.

The Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, president of the interfaith Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said McCorvey’s continued support of first-trimester abortions showed she is “still pro-choice.”

“A lot of Christians are confused about what pro-choice means,” said Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest. “They think that if you don’t think abortion is appropriate in every instance you are not pro-choice.

“In truth, the movement is filled with Christians who differ on when abortion is appropriate. We just all agree that it’s an individual decision.”