Three decades of abortion ‘rights’
America marks the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade next week, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that created the “right” to abortion and led to the destruction of more than 40 million unborn children.
Around the country, the state and local chapters of such advocacy groups as the National Abortion Rights League (NARAL), the National Organization of Women (NOW) and Planned Parenthood plan celebrations. But at least one noteworthy individual will not be invited to any of the festivities — Norma McCorvey. She’s the Jane “Roe” in Roe v. Wade.
Back in 1996, McCorvey underwent a conversion. She left the abortion “rights” movement — she actually was working for an abortion clinic in North Dallas — and joined the pro-life struggle.
“All those years I was wrong,” wrote McCorvey, in the book “Won by Love,” co-authored with Gary Thomas (Thomas Nelson, 1998). “Signing the affidavit (which made her the plaintiff in the 1973 Supreme Court case), I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion — at any point — was wrong.”
Of course, the leaders of the abortion “rights” movement don’t want to hear this. NARAL’s Kate Michelman, NOW’s Kim Gandy and Planned Parenthood’s Gloria Feldt don’t want to acknowledge that the woman in whose name the nation’s highest court legalized abortion three decades ago, who once fondly referred to Roe v. Wade as “my law,” now believes the justices erred.
The Los Angeles Times published a nationwide poll a few years back in which it posed an unequivocal question. “Do you agree with this statement: Abortion is murder.” Fifty-seven percent agreed. Meanwhile, in a New York Times/CBS News Poll, 66 percent of respondents said they opposed second-trimester abortions and an overwhelming 79 percent opposed third-trimester abortions.
Yet, abortion “rights” extremists oppose any limitations whatsoever on abortion, including efforts to outlaw partial-birth abortions, a grisly late-term procedure that involves partially extracting an unborn baby, legs first, through the birth canal, cutting an incision in the skull base, then draining the brain through a suction tube, causing the skull to collapse.
The abortion “rights” movement originally tried to mislead the public into believing that the numbers of partial birth abortions were negligible. Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion providers, went on ABC’s “Nightline” and told the viewing audience that the procedure “was rarely used and only on women whose lives were in danger or whose fetuses were damaged.”
The dishonesty of the abortion “rights” movement hasn’t gotten the same sensational coverage in the national media as, say, the deceptions of the tobacco industry or the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other major corporations. That’s because the national media is biased in favor of abortion “rights,” as Mark Shields, the Washington political columnist, a regular on CNN’s “Capital Gang,” confirmed in an article a couple years back.
Any poll, any newsworthy revelation — like McCorvey’s conversion, like Fitzsimmons’ confession — that does not comport with the abortion “rights” orthodoxy, Shields wrote, is “largely ignored by my brothers and sisters in the Washington press corps.”
That is why any effort to restrict abortion is portrayed as an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, to “turn back the clock,” not only by such abortion “rights” leaders as Michelman, Gandy and Feldt, but also by much of the “mainstream” media. So there is a great divide in the nation’s 30-year abortion debate. The abortion “rights” movement, the pro-abortion media favor abortion-on-demand, under any and every circumstance. The American people don’t.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)