Patrick J. Buchanan
June 23 2003
Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that created a woman's right to an
abortion, was the most controversial of the last century. It divides us yet.
Any nominee to a federal appellate court or the Supreme Court who does not swear
allegiance to Roe is disqualified in the eyes of the Democratic Party. To
Democrats, ensuring a woman's right to abort her child has become a tenet of
their party, a reason for its existence, an article of their faith.
But what if Roe v. Wade was based on fraud, deceit and lies?
Comes now a woman who knows as surely as anyone whether that explosive charge is
true. That is Jane Roe herself, the Texas woman whose plight and plea persuaded
the high court to strike down every state law restricting a woman's right to
abort her child.
Who was, and is, Jane Roe? She is Norma McCorvey, and she has just filed a
petition in a Dallas federal court, as the litigant in Roe v. Wade, to have the
1973 ruling overturned.
McCorvey contends that when she was a 21-year-old street person, she was
ignorant of what abortion meant, made up her story about being raped, and was
deceived and used by her lawyers. Those lawyers, McCorvey says, told her that
the baby inside her was "tissue."
After Roe v. Wade came down, McCorvey became the Rosa Parks of the feminist
movement. And because of her fame, she was regularly offered jobs at the
abortion mills. What she witnessed inside them changed her heart.
Here is an excerpt from the affidavit McCorvey just filed, describing what it
was like in the "clinics" where she held the hands of women being aborted, as
they dug their nails into her palm:
"But the most distressing room in the facility was the 'parts room.' Aborted
babies were stored there. There were dead babies and baby parts stacked like
cordwood. Some of the babies made it into buckets and others did not, and
because of its disgusting features, no one ever cleaned the room. The stench was
horrible. Plastic bags full of baby parts that were swimming in blood were tied
up, stored in the room and picked up once a week.
"At another clinic, the dead babies were kept in a big white freezer full of
dozens of jars, all full of baby parts, little tiny hands and feet visible
through the jars, frozen in blood. The abortion clinic's personnel always
referred to these dismembered babies as 'tissue.'"
This is a scene straight out of hell. Recoiling from it, in 1995, McCorvey
became a Christian and resolved to do what she could to overturn the decision
that has permitted 40 million unborn to be butchered, their tiny torn bodies
discarded in the fashion described above.
Aiding McCorvey is human-rights lawyer Allan Parker, founder of the Justice
Foundation. Parker is constructing a case much like the one Thurgood Marshall
built in Brown v. Board of Education
Marshall argued that in the 57 years that had elapsed since Plessy v. Ferguson,
evidence had mounted to show that segregation did demonstrable harm to black
children in public schools. Based on that evidence, and new advances in social
science, Marshall argued, Plessy should be overturned.
Using the affidavit of McCorvey, Parker is calling for Roe to be reversed, whole
and entire, on the following grounds.
First, Roe deprived women of all protection from the dangers of abortion. Parker
provides affidavits from 1,000 women who testify to the physical, psychological
and emotional damage they suffered as a result of their abortions – damage of
which they were never made aware. The harm and horrors of abortion were not
considered in 1973. Now they are known.
Second, tremendous strides have been made in medicine and science to enable the
Rehnquist court, better than the Burger court of 1973, to decide with certitude
when life begins.
Third, the issue of a women's right to privacy and not to have to care for an
unwanted child has been addressed by Texas. Under a 1999 law, Texas will provide
an upbringing for every child, up to 18 years of age, no questions asked of the
mother, whose privacy will be protected.
As the facts have changed, and the situation has changed, and the thinking has
changed – and the original Roe decision was based on claims rooted in deceit and
lies – Roe should be reconsidered.
That is Parker's case. It is a compelling one – as compelling as the story of
Norma McCorvey, a brave women seeking to right a horrible wrong that was done,
in some measure, because of her. On Friday, a Dallas federal judge threw out
McCorvey's plea. But, undeterred, Allan Parker intends to take it the next step
– and ultimately to the Supreme Court, where it belongs.