I wrote this term paper for my history class on Roe v. Wade and I thought I'd just post it on the forum!
Enjoy!
Freedom of Choice or the Death Warrant of 50,000,000?
The Controversial Case of Roe vs. Wade
Dallas, Texas, 1970. Norma McCorvey, a divorced woman with a 10th grade education, claimed that she was raped, which resulted in her becoming pregnant. This was her third pregnancy. Her mother took away her first child, Melissa, and her second child had been put up for adoption. Now pregnant for a third time, Norma McCorvey decided adoption was not an option. She was completely alone. “Norma McCorvey had no family support, no steady income, no stable home–nothing that she thought a child deserved” (Hitchcock cool . McCorvey wanted to have an abortion, but didn’t have enough money to travel to another state in order to have a safe abortion. Abortion on demand was illegal in many states, including Texas. The only time an abortion was legal was when the mother’s life was in danger. This all changed when McCorvey was approached by two female attorneys and women’s rights activists, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. The three women decided to challenge Texas’ strict anti-abortion law. They argued that before the legalization of abortion 5,000-10,000 women died from back-alley abortions. The defendant in the case was the district attorney, Henry B. Wade, and his lawyers were John Tolle, Jay Floyd, and Robert Flowers. The end result was that on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided that a woman should have the fundamental right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. This resulted in the legalization of abortion, the annihilation of the nationwide anti-abortion laws, and a battle between abortion’s supporters and opponents that continues even to this day.
While still in law school, Sarah Ragle’s future was jeopardized when she faced an unwanted pregnancy. Her soon-to-be husband, Ron Weddington, helped her get an illegal abortion in Mexico. The doctor had a good reputation for clean facilities and good quality health care. Sarah Ragle had a safe abortion, and she and Ron Weddington married. Sarah Weddington decided to become active in the women’s rights movement and teamed up with Linda Coffee, “who had a reputation as a brilliant legal mind” (Romaine 17).
Then, at Columbo’s Pizza, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee met their potential pawn: A down-on-her-luck pregnant woman named Norma McCorvey.
All her life, Norma McCorvey had struggled with a plethora of hardships. Norma Leah Nelson was born in Lettesworth, Louisiana on September 22, 1947. Her mother was abusive, her father Olin was barely around, and Norma was the one who took care of her mentally-challenged older brother Jimmy. Even when the Nelsons moved to Dallas, Texas, home life only got worse. “Her father spent more and more time in his TV repair shop, and her mother spent more and more time in the bars” (Hitchcock 9).
When Norma was 10 she stole money from the gas station she worked at and, with a friend, took a bus to Oklahoma City. After two days they were found in a hotel, and a judge sent her to a Catholic boarding school to reform her. Unfortunately, it failed. Norma was so rebellious she was sent to the State School for Girls when she was 11 and got her education there until she was 15. She dropped out of school in the 10th grade. Norma’s mother had a male relative who agreed to take in the troubled dropout. He welcomed Norma by raping her the first night. She fought, but after a few days surrendered with shame, and it was not until a visit from her mother that Norma revealed the truth. Her mother confronted the perpetrator. He laughed at her and kicked them out.
When Norma was 16 she married Ellwood “Woody” Blanche McCorvey, III, a
24-year-old sheet metal worker who turned out to be abusive. Norma had a lovely singing voice and Woody wanted to use her talent to make it to fame and fortune, but when Norma found out she was pregnant he beat her and accused her of cheating on him. The last time she saw Woody was in the hospital room where her baby girl Melissa was born. “He showed up in her hospital room the day after their daughter was born. Norma screamed. A nurse rushed in, made Woody McCorvey leave, and helped Norma, a 16-year-old mother, feed newborn Melissa” (Hitchcock 12). However, seeing that Norma was an irresponsible parent, her mother took baby Melissa and went back to Louisiana. Norma got pregnant a second time. Although the father was willing to marry her, she refused, and due to a prearranged adoption never got to see her second child. She ended up joining a carnival and became pregnant again. Then, at Columbo’s Pizza, she met Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. It was here at an ordinary pizza restaurant in Dallas, Texas, that the three women who would drastically alter the constitution met.
The people who support abortion are pro-choice. The pro-choice argument is that every woman facing an unplanned pregnancy should have a choice. They believe abortion should be safe and legal for the entire term of the pregnancy to prevent, for example, a pregnant rape victim from dying from a self-induced abortion or being arrested for having an illegal abortion. They are also against forced abortions and abortion restrictions (parental notification, bans on certain procedures, waiting periods, etc). They advocate sex education, contraception, and population control. Pro-choicers support their position using the statistics of the 5,000-10,000 women who died from illegal, back-alley abortions before Roe vs. Wade, as well as the argument that a rape victim should not have bear her assailant’s child. The core belief of the pro-choice movement is that the fate of feminism depends on the freedom for women to choose, and if taken away, freedom for women shall perish.
The people who oppose abortion are pro-life. The pro-life argument is that abortion is murder because human life begins at the moment of conception and the rights of the child outweigh the rights of the mother. They believe women in crisis pregnancies should have alternatives other than abortion and that abortion should only be legal to save the mother’s life. They are against federal funding for abortions, population control, embryonic stem cell research, and, like the pro-choicers, are against forced abortions. They advocate adoption, abstinence, and medical care for babies who survive botched abortions. Pro-lifers support their position using scientific evidence that shows that at 18 to 21 days, or three weeks after fertilization, the baby’s heart begins to beat, how there are bones at four weeks, how there are brain waves at six weeks, and how at eight weeks the baby already has fingers and toes. They believe that abortion exploits women and is not a sign of female empowerment, but desperation. The core belief of the pro-life movement is that the right to live is a fundamental right, and if taken away, all human rights shall cease to exist.
The four books I read were hard to find. Because Roe vs. Wade is so controversial and unpleasant, not many people want to read about what feminists consider the most important legal victory for feminism. Three of the books were Roe vs. Wade biographies, and the last one was Norma McCorvey’s second memoir, Won By Love. Two of the books attempted neutrality, but towards the end their personal positions became obvious. The author of the third book, Susan Tyler Hitchcock, did not hide her pro-choice partisanship. The title of her book is, Roe v. Wade: Protecting a Woman’s Right to Choose. The fourth book, Won By Love, is the story of Jane Roe/Norma McCorvey’s conversion to the pro-life movement.
The Case of Roe v. Wade by Leonard A. Stevens gives the reader the events before, during, and after Roe. Stevens tells us about the Comstock and Barnum Laws that made abortion illegal. In Chapter 3, “The Nurse Who Would Be Heard,” Stevens talks about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s crusade for birth control after a lifetime of witnessing the effects pregnancy has on women. Her crusade brought the issue of family planning and abortion to the national spotlight. Stevens also writes about a case in which Sherri Finkbine, a pregnant actress from a children’s television show, used a tranquilizer called Thalidomide that helped her sleep, but caused her unborn baby to become deformed. As a result, she and her husband went to Sweden to have an abortion, but in exchange she received negative national attention. Although he does not go into detail with Norma McCorvey’s life story, Stevens’ book does justice historically and date-wise regarding the case from beginning to end.
Roe v. Wade: Protecting a Woman’s Right to Choose by Susan Tyler Hitchcock begins with Norma McCorvey’s story, then tells about Sarah Weddington, Founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger, etc. Hitchcock mentions that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the early feminists, was adamantly against abortion and preferred fighting for the right to vote. Hitchcock even tells about abortion in the past, provides inserts that define abortion, statistics of back-alley abortion deaths, a pictures of tools used for self-induced or back-alley abortions, etc.
Roe v. Wade: Abortion and the Supreme Court by Deborah S. Romaine focuses primarily on Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee and mentions Jane Roe a few times. Unlike Stevens and Hitchcock, Romaine goes into depth on the issue, mentioning how abortion is more than just a legal issue, but a moral issue that affects people personally. For pro-choicers, it is the issue of a woman’s right to choose without government interference. For pro-lifers, it is the issue of the unborn child’s right to live.
What I found strange was Leonard A. Stevens’ book gave Norma McCorvey’s date of birth, but Deborah S. Romaine’s book and Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s book did not provide the date of birth, as though they did not feel such details were important. In fact, of the first three books, Stevens’ book is the only one that is historically accurate date-wise. The tone of the books is different. The tone of Stevens’ book is more standard, like a textbook. Hitchcock’s book carries a personal tone, focusing on the people of the story, not just the facts. Romaine is standard and personal, but ends her book with a challenge to find middle ground on the hotly debated issue of abortion. All three books acknowledge that America’s war on abortion is far from over.
The six websites I examined contained diverse viewpoints on Roe vs. Wade. Two of the websites were so partisan, I only obtained one viewpoint from them; others were partisan, but provided the opposing side’s view; and only one was completely neutral.
My first website was called FindLaw (www.findlaw.org). Basically, it gave a legal overview of Roe vs. Wade. It endorsed neither the pro-life movement nor the pro-choice movement, but rather gave only the facts about the case, making it easier to obtain accurate information about Roe vs. Wade. This website was the only non-partisan website I could find.
The second website I examined was Planned Parenthood’s website (www.plannedparenthood.org). Founded by birth control and eugenics activist Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion advocacy organization in America. The website only gave the pro-choice view; that in the case of Roe vs. Wade the Supreme Court made abortion a constitutional right and how, “Many of us don’t recall the deadly days before Roe when abortions were illegal and ‘choice’ for too many women meant a dangerous back-alley procedure” (www.plannedparenthood.org). The website then goes on to say how “anti-choice” activists are out to threaten women’s right to choose and how they, Planned Parenthood, are fighting Washington to lift abortion restrictions and make sure all women and girls have a choice. While the partisanship of the website made it useless from a research standpoint, it allowed me to get a glimpse of a pro-choicer’s view of Roe vs. Wade.
Planned Parenthood glorifies Margaret Sanger as, “one of the heroes of the movement” (www.plannedparenthood.org). Pro-choicers look up to Sanger as a champion for choice, crusader of contraception, fighter of feminism. Her fight for birth control played a large role in Roe vs. Wade. The sixth child of a family of 11, Sanger felt strongly about pregnancy. “Constantly I saw the ill effects of child bearing on women of the poor. Mothers whose physical condition was inadequate to combat disease were made pregnant, through ignorance and love, and died. Children were left motherless, fathers were left hopeless and desperate, often feeling like criminals, blaming themselves for their wife’s death––all because these mothers were denied by law knowledge to prevent conception...” (Stevens 19). Comments like these give the impression that Margaret Sanger had good intentions and really wanted to help these women and their families. Margaret Sanger and her Planned Parenthood allies heavily advocated their agenda during the Roe vs. Wade case. They had marches, peaceful demonstrations, and did all the things good advocates do.
However, what I found quite disturbing was that nowhere on the Planned Parenthood website, nor in any of the books I read, does it mention that Margaret Sanger was a racist. She wanted Italians, Jews, Slavs, and blacks sterilized. Admirers of Sanger might be shocked by these questionable comments: “We are failing to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying...a dead weight of human waste...an ever-increasing spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all,” (www.thinkexist.com), “It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them,” (www.blackgenocide.org), “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race,” (Woman, Morality, and Birth Control, 12) and, “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it” (www.eadshome.com). These are not things you should say out loud. “While she forever despised abortion, her fight for the sexual rights of women led all the way to Roe vs. Wade” (Stevens 1 cool . When you are the founder of an organization that advocates the very thing you claim to despise and you make inflammatory comments such as the ones above, that argument flies right out the window. We do not know whether Margaret Sanger truly believed in her cause or if she had a far more sinister agenda than she let on, but because she is now dead and therefore cannot explain herself, we can only assume that the warrior for women was also an advocate of prejudice, hatred, and even genocide.
The third website was Feminist Majority Foundation (www.feminist.org). They provided an overview of Roe vs. Wade and how you can protect Roe vs. Wade because if overturned, “Some women will die, some will be maimed, too many women’s lives will be sacrificed. We will return to the days when desperate women risked their lives by resorting to self-inflicted or illegal back-alley abortions” (www.feminist.org). This argument is one used regularly by the pro-choice activists.
The fourth website I visited was California Right To Life (www.calright2life.org), a pro-life website. Like Find Law and Feminist Majority, California Right To Life provides the history of Roe vs. Wade. Unlike Planned Parenthood and Feminist Majority, California Right To Life gives you the aftermath of Roe vs. Wade, testimony from former abortionists, pro-choice arguments and rebuttals to them, and the statistics of the number of babies killed, as well as the number of women who have died from safe, legal abortions since Roe vs. Wade. Bernard Nathanson, former abortionist and founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL Pro-Choice America, confessed that he and the other advocates of the abortion rights movement intentionally lied about the number of women who died from back-alley abortion death. “How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason which had to be done was permissible” (www.calright2life.org). He admits that the actual death toll of back-alley abortion deaths at that time was 39, not 5,000 or 10,000, and that abortion advocates were willing to lie to the American people for the sake of their agenda. For further proof, even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says the real death toll is 39. Make no mistake that 39 deaths is tragic and could have been prevented through compassion and support for the mother and her child, but to say that tens of thousands of women were dying from illegal abortions sounds a little exaggerated.
“Since abortion was legalized in 1973, between 1973 and 1987, 215 women died as a result of complications from botched legal abortions. The government stopped collecting these statistics in 1987, though many women continue to die each year from legal abortions” (www.calright2life.org). According to more recent studies, such as studies done from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than 350 women have died from safe, legal abortions. The death toll of the unborn is 50,000,000. Put those two numbers together and 50,000,350 Americans are dead, women and their children. 4,000 abortions take place every single day. As I write this term paper, a defenseless unborn child is being aborted.
The fifth website was from the Silent No More Awareness campaign (www.silentnomoreawareness.org). Silent No More Awareness is a campaign that reaches out to women who regret their abortions and men who regret their lost fatherhood. Silent No More was founded by two pro-life organizations, Anglicans for Life and Priests for Life. The campaign’s co-founders are Georgette Forney and Janet Morana. Georgette Forney had an abortion when she was 16 and has been an advocate for life ever since. Janet Morana is a born-again Christian and pro-life advocate. Studies have shown that the majority of women who have abortions suffer from physical trauma and psychological trauma. Women who choose abortion are more likely to get cervical or ovarian cancer. 13 out of 17 studies have reported that breast cancer is common among aborted women. Common side effects include severe pain, cramping, nausea, diarrhea, hemorrhaging, cervical laceration, menstrual disturbance, inflammation of the reproductive organs, uterine, bladder or bowel perforation, sterilization, infection, sepsis, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, etc. As for mental and emotional health, depression, anxiety, insomnia, guilt, pain, flashbacks of the experience, nightmares of children calling them from trash cans, feelings of worthlessness and failure, avoidance of children, friction in relationships, anorexia and/or bulimia, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, self-injury, and thoughts of suicide are common. The sixth website from the National Right to Life Committee (www.nrlc.org) will confirm these post-abortion syndromes.
The early feminists such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul were adamantly against abortion. Susan B. Anthony called it “child murder.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton deemed it “infanticide.” She added, “When we consider that women are being treated as property, it is degrading to treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit” (www.nrlc.org). Alice Paul’s opinion: “Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women” (www.nrlc.org). If they were here today, what would they say to Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Sarah Weddington, and other pro-choice Americans?
Not many people know about the aftermath of Roe vs. Wade. In her second memoir, Won By Love, Jane Roe/Norma McCorvey chronicles her painful journey while in the pro-choice movement and what she calls her redemption of converting to the pro-life movement. Norma never had the abortion she fought for. She gave birth to a baby girl and gave her up for adoption. For two decades, she was a committed pro-choice activist and worked at an abortion clinic called A Choice For Women with her friend, Connie Gonzalez. In Won By Love, McCorvey gives the reader an inside look at what really happens in an abortion clinic, with examples such as stained blood on the abortion room floors and even the walls, older women and young girls coming in for abortions, women who wanted abortions simply because they were disappointed in the sex of the child they carried, to the grisly “Parts Room” where the remains of the tiny victims were kept in a freezer. Over time, as women starting approaching her and thanking her for making it possible for them to have their 5 or 6 abortions, Norma McCorvey realized she had made a grave mistake. Through the influence of Flip Benham, the leader of Operation Rescue, an organization known for its pro-life advocacy, and the loving nature of Emily, the seven-year-old daughter of an Operation Rescue worker, Norma denounced her pro-choice position, converted to Catholicism, and has been a staunch pro-life activist ever since. Norma McCorvey says, “I am pro-life. No exceptions.” Norma admitted that she was never raped. Her pregnancy was the result of an affair with a married man and she did not want anyone to know about it. Her little lie has resulted in the deaths of 50,000,000 innocent unborn babies.
As for Sarah Weddington, who to this day is still an abortion rights activist, her true colors poured forth when in a Byrant Gumbel interview she said, “I don’t care about Norma McCorvey. I care about Jane Roe. Norma McCorvey was just a name on a class-action lawsuit” (McCorvey 194). She never cared about the human being on whose behalf she brought the lawsuit, let alone the 50,000,000 human beings whose death warrant was signed 36 years ago.
Having investigated this infamous case, my final conclusion is Roe vs. Wade was a travesty. The case was built on lies and misrepresentations: Norma McCorvey’s secret affair, NARAL’s fabricated statistics, Margaret Sanger’s hate towards humanity, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington’s own agenda. Since January 22, 1973, misguided, desperate women have been deceived by abortion advocates and unborn Americans have been paying the price. Since Roe vs. Wade more than 350 women have died from safe, legal abortions, and those who live to tell the tale are mothers of dead babies, slaves of silent suffering. Worst of all, one-fourth of a generation, 50,000,000 little children, have been brutally murdered. To kill 3-inch babies, the abortionist inserts a powerful suction tube into the womb and dismembers the baby (Suction Aspiration/Vacuum Curettage), inject Saline solution into the mother so that the baby shallows it and is burned alive from the inside (Saline abortion; salt poisoning) or Potassium Chloride, which goes directly to the child’s heart and triggers cardiac arrest; Hystertomy, which in incisions are made in the abdomen and the uterus and remove the infant, or scrape the mother’s insides and cut the baby out (Dilation and Curettage). “The abortionist inserts a curette, loop-shaped steel knife, up into the uterus. With this, he cuts the placenta and baby into pieces and scrapes them out into a basin.” (Dr. J.C. Wilke, Abortion: Questions and Answers) If that sounds heinous, Partial Birth abortion, a late term procedure, is the most barbaric. The baby is pulled by it’s legs into the birth canal and long surgical scissors punctures their little head. The abortionist then enlarges the womb, inserts a catheter, and sucks the child’s brain out. The helpless victim may be small, but research has shown that they feel excruciating pain. Dr. Robert J. White, a professor of neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University, says, “An unborn child at 20 weeks gestation is fully capable of experiencing pain. Without question, abortion is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure.” Other methods include RU486, or the French abortion pill, which prevents the progesterone from maintaining the nutrient lining. As a result, the nutrient lining disintegrates and the baby is starved to death; Methotrexate, which attacks the trophoblast, the tissue that surrounds the child and as the trophoblast crumbles the baby is deprived of the food, oxygen, and fluids needed to survive; and Dilatation and Evacuation (D&E), in which, “Used to abort unborn children as old as 24 weeks, this method is similar to the D&C. The difference is that forceps with sharp metal jaws are used to grasp parts of the developing baby, which are then twisted and torn away. This continues until the child’s entire body is removed from the womb. Because the baby’s skull has often hardened to bone by this time, the skull must sometimes be compressed or crushed to facilitate removal. If not carefully removed, sharp edges of the bones may cause cervical laceration. Bleeding from the procedure may be profuse” (www.nrl.com). Some abortions, including Partial Birth abortion, require the use of an ultrasound so that the abortionist can make sure his infant prey has been evacuated properly. These procedures have been the grisly fate of 50,000,000 unborn babies for 36 years.
The baby’s heart starts beating at 18-21 days, often before the mother even knows she is pregnant. Roe vs. Wade says a doctor can stop it forever. I think it is time to ask ourselves the question...Have we gone too far? Do we have the freedom to choose who has the right to live?
