By: Sarah Kroth |
Jane Roe was the alias given to Norma McCorvey, who had come to Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, the lawyers to challenge Texas’ anti-abortion legislation. Norma had tried everything to get an abortion, even lying to doctors saying she was raped (the only loophole in the Texas law), but became Jane Roe for the sake of a class action suit against the law.
After the Roe v Wade decision McCorvey was vocally supportive of abortion rights, she even worked at an abortion clinic. In 1995 the group Operation Rescue moved next door to the abortion clinic McCorvey was working at. Slowly, through conversations and encounters with the Rev. Flip Benham, she changed her position on abortion. She recanted her statements supporting abortion, regretted her involvement in Roe v Wade, and was baptized by an Evangelical preacher. In 1997, the year of the 25th anniversary of Roe v Wade, McCorvey published a book detailing why she switched her position on abortion, and discussing her new relationship with God. She has since started her own anti-abortion group called Roe No More Ministry, and regularly marches on Washington with her group to protest abortion.
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At the same time, the fact that Roe changed her views on the case that bear her name does not invalidate the importance of Roe v. Wade, or the court decision. One reality of life that biology has given mankind that no legislation can ever change is that nature created a system that is, in many ways, extremely sexist–it puts virtually the entire burden of childbearing on the female. As a person with autism, my autism emerged in part because of the stresses that my mother endured while she was pregnant with me (I was the product of a very high-risk pregnancy where she endured gestational malnourishment). This reality cannot be changed, but the way society handles this inherent sexism in nature can be changed.
I am, and always will be (as far as I know), pro-choice. But my reasoning is different–as a male, I will never experience what it is like to get pregnant or make the decision to abort or carry a child inside of me. Therefore, I believe that as a male, I have NO BUSINESS dictating what a woman cannot do with her body. This has nothing to do with my personal beliefs on the sanctity of life–this has to do with the fact that in my opinion, no human being should ever inflict someting on another human being that they cannot experience themselves.
In addition, as a male, I am forced to witness my male peers in all-male social settings engage in discussions that are very degrading and insulting to females, as well as pressuring each other to engage in actions that put women in situations that might result in them having to get an abortion. Amazingly, most males feel they are “bonding” and “being friendly” to each other in these conversations. These conversations offend me to the core, yet as a male, I cannot even tell my male peers to keep quiet without being socially shunned from the male group. If males are going to mandate that they degrade and pressure other males to engage in this dialogue (which results in some of them abusing females), then we MUST given women choices on how to deal with the consequences of abuse by males, and NOT bash the female or say it is HER fault for killing HER child. For these reasons, I will always support abortion rights.