Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v Wade, hasn't pinged much on my radar over the years. I'm aware, of course, that she (allegedly, I guess we now need to stipulate) had a conversion experience in the 1990s in which she was baptized, announced she was pro-life, become a pro-life activist, and eventually a Catholic. Tonight, FX is going to air a documentary film, just in time for election season to start heating up, in which she announces that she grifted everyone because she figured out that being a pro-life celebrity was a way to make some money.
The gist of it seems to be, she used them ("them" being pro-life activists), and they used her. And this a few decades after the pro-abortion activists used her, at a time when she really was down-and-out, to front their legal-activist lawsuit which eventually led to legalized abortion.
I've seen any number of articles the last few days which use her sensational (alleged) recantation as a club with which to beat the entire pro-life movement. Are leaders of the pro-life movement the equivalent of televangelists (two not entirely mutually exclusive sets of persons)? Perhaps it has its hucksters and charlatans. It also has a lot of sincerely committed people.
I expect that many of the latter are feeling betrayed by Norma McCorvey. But who among us hasn't let down someone, at some point in life? If she was part grifter, part substance abuser, part liar, part trash, and not big enough for the public stage on which she found herself - well, that could describe a lot of people I've known, including one I see in the mirror every time I shave.
"...not big enough for the public stage in which she found herself"
ReplyDeleteYes, good observation.
I wondered when I read this if Norma McCorvey has herself been lost in the iterations of her story, co-opted first by the legal-abortion side and then by the anti-abortion side.
Is the documentary, in some kind of fuzzy way, another attempt to find HER side?
Of course there are sincere and committed people on both sides of this issue. What troubles me is that the abortion "debate" has been reduced to two sides, each with its bumper-sticker rhetoric. All of that has a tendency to scrub away the real complexity of women's feelings, health, wealth, reproduction, and sexuality.
I blame the whole celebrity culture. If you put someone up as a poster child, and it rarely ends well. It isn't just the pro-life movement. It happens in sports. And media. Think of all the child stars. Miley Cyrus, for instance. It's not a matter of "if" they show themselves to be flawed human beings, it's "when".
ReplyDeleteI did read about Norma McCorvey. What I haven't read is any comments by her daughter. I don't know if she was adopted, or if Norma raised her. But she is a person apart from Norma's problems. If she is like most of us, she probably feels that her life is worth living.
Found the answer to my question about the daughter. She was adopted, and her adopted family has kept hers, and their, identity a secret. It is not even known if she is aware that she was the baby at the center of Roe. Probably just as well.
DeleteOh boy! What if she sent her spit to Ancestry dot com? Even if Norma is not in the registry, her relatives might be.
DeleteShe may know, and decided to keep the information quiet. Which would certainly be her right.
DeleteI find some aspects of "23 and Me" and Ancestry.com ethically troubling. People have the right to find out about their own background, but do they have a right to turn other people's lives upside down?
DeleteAs someone who "turned other people's lives upside down" in tracking down my dad's biological father, I would tell you "yes." All of us have a right to be acknowledged and provided with information, however inconvenient our existence might be. There are ways to do this to minimize disruption to others. And, guess what: usually our existence is not that big of a surprise to anyone.
DeleteArticle and lots of comments at the America website.
ReplyDelete