By Kami Klein
Norma McCorvey has been known over the past 4 decades as the anonymous plaintiff Roe, in the deeply controversial Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. The year was 1973 when the highest Court held that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman a right to abortion during the entirety of the pregnancy and defined different levels of state interest for regulating abortion in the second and third trimesters. From that moment to now, over 59,115,995 children have been aborted in the United States.
The journey of Norma McCorvey ended with her death on February 18th, 2017 but the divide between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life has moved no closer to resolution. The rights of the unborn were not even a part of the lawsuit when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and the pro-life movement has been attempting to have those voices heard ever since.
Norma, interestingly enough, never had an abortion. She never attended a single trial nor did she give a deposition. She signed documents only once after failing to get an illegal abortion in which she actually went to term with the child later giving the baby up for adoption. In later years, she described herself as a “pawn” in the fight to legalize abortion.
McCorvey came forth about her part in Roe v. Wade when court documents were released, and she became the poster child of the pro-choice movement, working for abortion clinics and protesting against the pro-life message. Her life had been battered from the beginning, but it was only when she became a Christian that she understood the full and tragic impact of Roe v. Wade.
In her book, Won By Love, she wrote:
“I was sitting in O.R.’s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. ‘Norma’, I said to myself, ‘They’re right’. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo , and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth—that’s a baby!
I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It wasn’t about ‘missed periods’. It was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, 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. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”
Charisma magazine has written a powerful testimony of Norma’s path to God in the article, Norma McCorvey’s First Church Experience as a Believer where not only did Norma experience the love and forgiveness of Jesus, she also experienced the love and forgiveness of the body of Christ—the church.
Join Jim and Lori Bakker on The Jim Bakker Show beginning March 3rd as the Bakkers welcome Rabbi Jonathan Cahn and Mikel French to the show where they will be discussing the inauguration, the future of Roe v. Wade and the inspirational story of Lori Bakker’s God-destined meeting with Norma and the time they spent together.
Norma’s life has been told from every angle. She had been called names from all sides and struggled daily to discover for herself who she was. It was through Christ that she finally discovered the truth.
Norma McCorvey was and IS, simply and wonderfully, a child of God.
additional sources: Roe vs Wade fast facts, Norma McCorvey, ‘Roe’ in Roe v Wade, is Dead at 69, Norma McCorvey ‘Roe’ in Roe v Wade case legalizing abortion dies aged 69, U.S. abortion statistics by Year (1973-Current), Wikipedia – Norma McCorvey