Once again we are on the cusp of another "landmark" decision in the Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life battle as the Supreme Court of the United States seems ready to overturn the decision of "Roe v. Wade". The media, the Internet and everyone on Social Media have their thumbs itching and ready to weigh in and are already in a frenzy over it. But I thought I would take a different path.
I wanted to bring this into a more personal and relatable realm and share with you some of the details I have learned about Norma McCorvey (the "Roe" in Roe v. Wade) and her daughter, Shelley (also known as "The Roe Baby"). I have consciously and actively watched these events transpire over the past forty-five years and have attempted to get to the ultimate truth of these things. But I have also seen many times people think something political will change things that actually have much deeper roots; a person's heart and beliefs.
As always with me, I hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
WHO IS ROE in "ROE v. WADE"?
Norma McCorvey, née Norma Lea Nelson, also known as Jane Roe, (born September 22, 1947, Simmesport, Louisiana, U.S.—died February 18, 2017, Katy, Texas).
American activist who was the original plaintiff (anonymized as Jane Roe) in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade (1973), which made abortion legal throughout the United States.
Born: September 22, 1947 Louisiana
Died: February 18, 2017 (aged 69) Texas
"McCorvey grew up in Texas, the daughter of a single alcoholic mother. She got into trouble frequently and at one point was sent to a reform school. She married and became pregnant at 16 but divorced before the child was born; she subsequently relinquished custody of the child to her mother.
In 1967 she gave up a second child for adoption immediately after giving birth.
When she became pregnant again in 1969, she wanted to have an abortion. In Texas at the time, such a procedure was legal only if the mother’s life would be endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term. McCorvey was referred to feminist lawyers Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who had been seeking just such a client to challenge the laws restricting access to abortion.
McCorvey was hoping that she would quickly gain permission to receive an abortion, but she was unsuccessful. Coffee and Weddington changed the case to a class-action suit, and, by the time a ruling was made by a federal three-judge panel in June that the Texas law against abortion was unconstitutional, McCorvey had given birth and again given up the infant for adoption.
The state of Texas appealed, and in 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that during the first trimester of pregnancy a pregnant woman did have the right to have an abortion “free of interference by the State.”
In the early 1980s she began volunteering at an abortion clinic and also began speaking out in favour of the right to choose, becoming increasingly well known.
Norma - the Pro-Life years.
However, in 1995 McCorvey befriended Philip Benham, head of the aggressive pro-life organization Operation Rescue and she soon began campaigning AGAINST the right to abortion. In 1998 she converted to Roman Catholicism after coming under the influence of Frank Pavone, who led the pro-life Priests for Life.
But in the documentary "AKA Jane Roe" (2020), a dying McCorvey claimed that she had been paid by anti-abortion groups to support their cause."
(For the full article click the Link below)
SOURCE: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norma-McCorvey
MY COMMENTS:
McCorvey was all over the place! Getting pregnant, handing her kids over to others, wanting a quick abortion to rid herself of another baby, later openly living as a lesbian with as many women as she had previously had men, yielding to whatever ideology would get her acceptance or just plain cold, hard cash.
Yet her self-serving actions had consequences causing turmoil, chaos and massive amounts of DEATH.
Let that be a lesson to all of us when we think what we do and how we behave won't affect anyone but ourselves. For GOOD or BAD, actions have consequences.
And if you think all that is a messed up life of "gooble-dee-goop", read how it affected her daughter, Shelley (aka. "The Roe Baby"), as she discovers who her real mother is, lives in the middle of a tug-of-war between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life movements and their PR machines, and becomes a target and fodder for yellow journalism.
After being married and a mother herself and faced with the imminent death of her birth mother, the article in The Atlantic ends this way.
"Shelley had long held a private hope, she said, that Norma would one day “feel something for another human being, especially for one she brought into this world.” Now that Norma was dying, Shelley felt that desire acutely. “I want her to experience this joy—the good that it brings,” she told me. “I have wished that for her forever and have never told anyone.”
But Shelley let the hours pass on that winter’s day. And then it was too late.
From Shelley’s perspective, it was clear that if she, the Roe baby, could be said to represent anything, it was not the sanctity of life but the difficulty of being born unwanted."
Read The WHOLE ARTICLE FOR YOURSELVES .
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/jane-roe-v-wade-baby-norma-mccorvey/620009/
For those of you who believe you are still capable of sitting on the fence about this issue I must inform you that you are not. Now that science has caught up and the question of "Is it life or potential life?" is moot, because we can now see into the womb and know it's a baby, the decision has become only one of two options.
Which right is the greater one? The baby's right to live or the mother's right to kill it.
IMAGE FROM "SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN".
Truth, with Love,
Always, Laura-Lee
