Re-printed from Envoy Magazine
A Pro-Abortion Icon Comes To Life
By Frank PavoneThe true story of how God's merciful grace Roe, Roe, Roe'd Norma McCorvey to shore.
The so-called "pro-choice" movement has a lot of unpleasant and inconvenient realities to deal with these days. Not the least of these is that the woman who once served as their icon is now both pro-life and about to become a member of the Catholic Church, the institution which is the single greatest obstacle to the pro-abortion agenda.
Norma McCorvey was the plaintiff in the Roe v. Wade decision, which, on January 22, 1973, struck down the laws prohibiting abortion in all 50 states. On July 15 of this year, Norma issued the following statement: "After many months of prayer, and many worried nights, I am making the joyous announcement today that I have decided to join the Mother Church of Christianity — by which I of course mean the Roman Catholic Church.
I was baptized into the Christian faith several years ago by the Rev. Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue. Since that time, I have grown in my faith. One of the most important moments in this growth process occurred during prayer. I clearly heard the Heavenly Father say to me that I was to be with Him soon. I was very scared of this, thinking that it meant I was to die. I consulted my dear friend, Fr. Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, who has been the catalyst to bring me into the Catholic Church. I told him of my concerns, and his advice to me was to continue to pray and to ponder this message. I listened to him and came to realize that what God was actually saying to me was to "come all the way home to Him" in His Church — the Church Jesus Christ Himself founded, the Mother Church. My first public mention of my decision was at an Evangelical Church in Waco, Texas, at an event hosted by Daniel Vinzant. Waco is now like my Bethlehem.
"I will begin classes in Catholicism this July, taught by Fr. Edward Robinson, of the Dallas Diocese, where I live. I will also continue to be in close contact with Fr. Pavone, who now works at the Vatican and will arrange for me to receive my Confirmation in the city of Rome. He has told me that he is going to inform the Pope of my decision to become a Catholic."
The Pro-Abortion Days
Norma describes herself as "naive" when she became involved in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. She was pregnant and didn't know what to do. When someone suggested to her that she needed an abortion, she had to go home and look the word up in the dictionary. When she learned abortion was illegal, she was willing to talk to the attorneys who, she was told, were trying to change that law.
But Norma wasn't ready to become the icon of a movement. She just wanted help to solve her problem. But pregnancies and court cases don't work on the same timetable. The solution held out to her never actually became hers. What she discovered was that her own situation would never be the center of concern. She was hardly kept aware of the progress of the case, never entered the courtroom, and never had an abortion. She was simply a convenient case to be used to advance the abortion industry.
Years later, Norma revealed her identity and wrote I Am Roe, a book which reveals a tremendous amount of suffering and exploitation in her life. She was still "pro-choice" when she wrote this book, however, and still didn't see just how much exploitation came from that movement. Today, when I mention this book, she doesn't even like to hear about it.
Norma describes the time during her involvement with Roe v. Wade and up to her pro-life conversion as a life of pain and suffering. While she was at home with her mother, she felt like a street person who was homeless. Because she was so uncomfortable in her own home, she avoided it. Yet during this time she didn't feel angry with God.
Norma made numerous public appearances on behalf of the abortion movement. However, some of the leaders of that movement were quite uncomfortable with her. She had a directness and sincerity which didn't fit their style, and she didn't hesitate to challenge haughtiness when she saw it.
The Crumbling of Stereotypes
As Norma now explains, "Jane Roe has been laid to rest." Norma was working for an abortion mill when she first began the path home, a path described in riveting detail in her latest book, Won by Love. The journey was marked by a reversal of stereotypes. She experienced a growing awareness of the cruelty of the abortion industry, which she at first thought was a benefit for women. She also experienced the kindness and love of Christian pro-lifers, whom she once thought were cruel and evil people.
Norma learned this lesson of unconditional love from two small girls, daughters of one of the members of Operation Rescue. Norma's book, Won by Love, is named after her friendship with these children. She explains, "The title is simple, the love of two little girls who would stop and give me hugs every day. They, in their innocence, loved me regardless of what I was doing, and what I was doing was helping women kill their babies!"
Through these children, Norma came face to face with a basic error of the "pro-choice" movement. While sitting outside on a break with another worker from the abortion facility, the children were playing near them. As they ran by at one point, the coworker reached her foot out to trip one of them. Norma objected and chided her coworker. The response was, "But those are OR [Operation Rescue] kids!" Yet Norma stood firm and told her to leave. The point is that this pro-abortion person identified these innocent children with the perceived evil of the pro-life message. In the same way, many mothers are taught to identify their unborn children with the problems and difficulties of a crisis pregnancy. The person, in other words, becomes the evil. Norma could not yet perceive this error as applied to abortion, but saw it clearly when applied to the children she was coming to love.
Another catalyst in Norma's conversion was my friend, Rev. Flip Benham, the national director of Operation Rescue. He befriended Norma, and was eventually the one to baptize her into faith in Christ. One of the overwhelming moments of revelation for Norma was when Flip apologized to her for hurtful remarks he had directed to her on a previous occasion. He admitted to her that he, too, was a sinner in need of forgiveness. His humility moved her.
What happened at that moment was a double healing. Norma's stereotypical image of pro-life people as self-righteous was shattered. Even more significantly, Norma began to sense her own worth and dignity. Why was this man apologizing to her when it was so clear that he considered what she did as evil? How could a Christian pastor and pro-life leader who had dedicated his life and ministry to fighting the evil of abortion turn to the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade and, without compromising his message, treat her with respect and dignity? She was astonished, and it was precisely in that astonishment that she began to discover the pro-life message. It is a message of the dignity of the human person, no matter who that person is or what he or she does. As Pope John Paul II has written in The Gospel of Life, not even the murderer loses his dignity. Many people are in the abortion industry and fail to recognize the dignity of children in the womb because they fail to recognize their own dignity. When we in the pro-life movement can help them discover how valuable their own lives are, they may begin to discover that value in the children, too.
At a certain point, Norma made a deal with her Operation Rescue neighbors. If they would abstain from showing the picture of Malachi, an aborted child, she would give them two minutes with her patients.
This agreement on her part reveals another step on her journey. Norma is sincerely concerned about people, and about the good of women. Eventually, having seen that the abortion industry is more concerned about performing abortions than about the well-being of women, Norma actually began counseling women not to have the abortions for which they were calling.
The Catholic Church: No Stranger
Norma McCorvey describes her journey to the Faith as coming home. The Catholic Faith was not entirely new to her because her mother was Catholic and she went to the Catholic Church until she was about 9 or 10 years old.
When Norma stopped attending the Catholic Church as a young girl, it wasn't because she was angry with God or the Church. At that point, religion had become a struggle at home. Her mother was Catholic and her stepfather was a Jehovah's Witness. Instead of going to both churches or choosing between the two, she quit going to either. Yet as she looks back on her childhood, Norma explains that she "liked being in the Catholic Church because it was always so quiet and beautiful."
I can still see the fax that came into my office in the summer of 1995 from one of my Priests for Life staff in Dallas. The message was handwritten in big magic-marker letters, "Norma is being baptized tomorrow!" I made plans to fly to Dallas that weekend, and extended to Norma my own personal best wishes and those of Priests for Life and the Catholic Church. I began to see right away that Norma had a kinship with Catholicism. She asked me, for example, to bless her house in Dallas. Rev. Flip came with me on that occasion. One of the funniest stories Norma and I share is the fact that after the blessing, I left her a large, extra quantity of holy water. About a month later I asked her if she needed more. "Yes, Father, I do, but don't laugh at the reason why," she told me. "My friend and I forgot it was holy water, and we drank it!"
Catholicism draws people in many ways, not the least of which is the beauty of the liturgy. Norma came to one of the Masses I said in Dallas, and commented on the beauty of the many symbols used. The following year, I took her to EWTN to tape an interview with her. The devotion of Mother Angelica and her sisters, brothers, and priests could not have failed to have an impact on Norma's growing attraction to the Catholic Faith.
The Final Impetus
All of these influences helped to bring Norma to the point she has now reached. The most recent impetus was that Norma began to receive what she describes as "messages from Our Lord that she would soon be with Him." Norma explains that she doesn't see visions or hear voices. She wakes up in the middle of the night and the message is simply "just there." She keeps her computer on at night so she can write down these thoughts without them being lost, as they could be if she just wrote them on a piece of paper.
Norma, thinking that she was being told that she was about to die, asked me about these "messages." My advice to her was to not try to figure them out, nor to presume that they were from the Lord. Instead, I told her to simply pray with a sense of serenity and openness. Several months later, Norma announced that she had come to understand that she was soon going to "be with Our Lord" because she was coming home to His Church, the Church which He founded. It is noteworthy that in the course of all this, I never told her to join the Church.
Things Catholic and Ecumenical
She started praying the rosary last May after reading a book that had been given to her, and she found that it "felt good." Her rosary is something that she keeps with her medals, and she never leaves home without either. When asked how she feels about the moral structure that the Church provides and how she feels about obeying the Church in matters of faith and morals, she explains quite simply that she has no problems with this because "the Pope is ordained by God to look over His people. Without him [the Pope], there's no Church." She extends this line of thought to explain that since the Catholic Church is the first Church, the Church founded by Jesus, it must be the Church that everyone should follow.
Asked if she feels like she's arriving at the fullness of Truth by joining the Catholic Church, Norma answers simply, "Yes." Yet she is careful to point out that not much has changed. She's still worshiping the same God she worshiped as an Evangelical Christian. "This [the Catholic Church] is just the path to make me strong," she says. Norma says that in the Catholic Church, the people seem to be able to "get connected to God." They have "a serenity and almost seem to glow." At Mass, she feels closer to God and notices that closeness in the other Catholics who are present.
She believes she now has a special role as a liaison between the Evangelicals and the Catholics on the pro-life issue. In my own pro-life work, the ecumenical dimension has been one of the greatest blessings, and Priests for Life considers it a privilege to continue to build bridges and join hands with brothers and sisters in every denomination.
A Symbol and a Prophecy
The decision of any person to convert to Christ, to become pro-life, and to join the Catholic Church is a momentous decision in the life of that individual, and is a blessing for the entire Church and the pro-life movement. In the case of Norma McCorvey, the decision is also a prophecy. It has been my conviction from doing pro-life work in all 50 states that the abortion industry and the mentality behind it are collapsing. The days of abortion are numbered, because no lie can live forever. Jane Roe's abandonment of the pro-choice cause is one of many signs of this.
At a moving moment in the show I taped with her on EWTN, she asked me to bless the cross she was wearing. I knew this was no ordinary cross. It used to be a pro-choice bracelet. Upon her conversion, Norma had it melted down and transformed into a symbol of the Tree of Life.
The Cross continues to conquer.
That was then ... This is now. Monday, August 17 was a normal day for most people in Dallas, Texas. It was originally scheduled to be a fairly normal day for me, too, until it was decided that Norma McCorvey would make her profession of faith on that day, be received into the Catholic Church, and receive her Confirmation and First Holy Communion. The previous day, I preached at all the Sunday Masses at a parish in Baltimore, and then caught an afternoon flight to Dallas. That evening, I spoke to several hundred pro-lifers of the Dallas area, and Norma was seated in the front row. Although the next day was to be so monumental in her life, only a few of us knew about it. Norma wanted to keep it private so as not to be distracted by the glare of media. "It is a time of grace and prayer," she had told me, "a time when I really want to focus on the Lord."
At the end of my talk that evening, Fr. Ed Robinson, OP, the director of pro-life activities for the Diocese of Dallas, brought Norma in front of the gathered crowd and announced that the next morning there would be a Mass at 10:30 a.m. at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Dallas, during which Norma would be received into the Catholic Church. Those who could come would be most welcome.
Approximately 75 people, along with several priests, took part in the liturgy. As I gave Norma final instructions about the liturgy before it began, she had a tremendous sense of prayerfulness, calm, and readiness. She maintained this throughout the Mass and the ceremony of reception. "I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God . . . Norma, the Lord receives you into the Catholic Church . . . Norma, be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit." I have had the privilege a number of times in the past to administer the sacrament of Confirmation. Needless to say, however, it was unusually moving to be able to do so for Norma McCorvey. The oil of chrism on my thumb brought to my mind, and my feelings, the whole biblical significance of healing which the oil symbolizes . . . That oil, which has flowed for centuries, was now to bring its healing to one of the most wounded figures of our history. As I invoked the Holy Spirit upon her, I reflected on how He, the Lord and Giver of Life, cannot be mocked by those who stand for the taking of life. He indeed is more powerful than the lies of death.
In my remarks after Holy Communion, I said the following: "Norma, reflect carefully on what has happened now that you have received Jesus for the first time in Holy Communion. Our Faith teaches that by His Incarnation, the Son of God joined all humanity to Himself. In some fashion, every human being of all time is united to Him. This, of course, includes every human being in the womb, and includes those who were aborted. Today, you have received the very same flesh of the Son of God, to which all humanity has been joined. That means, Norma, that today, in giving you His Body, Jesus has also given you back all the babies that were aborted because of what you did. He has reunited to you all the children who never got to play in the playgrounds. He has restored them to you, closing the distance between you and them. He has reconciled them to you and given you peace. The first time I ever interviewed you, I started by saying, 'So, you are the Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade.' You responded, 'No, Father, I was the Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade.' Norma, those words were never more true than they are today. Amen."
