Why the revelations about Norma McCorvey don’t change anything

Earlier this week news broke that an upcoming documentary about Norma McCorvey - the plaintiff in the infamous US Roe v Wade abortion court case - is going to reveal that she had lied about becoming pro-life.

It has been reported that, in the documentary, filmed not long before her death in 2017, McCorvey confesses that she lied about her conversion to Evangelical Christianity and the pro-life cause in order to make money.

As you can imagine it didn’t take the abortion lobby long to start crowing about this news and attempting to use it as a cudgel to beat the pro-life movement with (they sure do seem to be obsessed with us!)

So what should us pro-lifers make of all this?

Before you get too worried about what some media talking heads are going to say about this development, remember the following important things...

Firstly, the mainstream media is now notoriously unreliable as an accurate and balanced source of information.

I think it will be important to reserve any final judgment until the documentary has actually been released later this week and we can hear not just what McCorvey said to the filmmaker, but also the fuller context of how it was said and how it has been presented.

Norma McCorvey had an extremely difficult and broken life that was marked by metal health troubles and this documentary was filmed in her final months.

People in such a vulnerable state are easily manipulated, especially if the filmmakers already had an agenda to colour her testimony in such a way as to favour their own ideological or political preferences.

It will be interesting to see not just the full statements she has made, but also the context and whether or not there has been any selective editing of those statements.

One obvious sign of such editing is jump cuts in the footage.

Another common trick to hide edits in the footage is to cut away from the interview subject and play other video footage over the top of what they are saying.

If that starts happening at key points during her testimony, listen carefully for hard cuts in the audio that make her vocal intonations sound odd.

These intonations happen because her actual statements have been edited in some way - and we will have no way to know what was left on the cutting room floor after those edits.

Another important thing to consider is her general psychological demeanour throughout the documentary, and whether or not she is being actively led into statements by the filmmaker or making them of her own freewill with an absolutely sound mind.

Secondly, don’t forget that the timing and nature of these revelations is part of an orchestrated marketing campaign for this documentary.

All documentary filmmakers desperately want large audiences to watch their documentaries - this is how they make a name for themselves and advance their personal careers.

Salacious marketing campaigns are a common tool used in pursuit of this goal, and it has not been uncommon for these sorts of campaigns to completely overstate the substance of what is actually revealed in a documentary.

When we see the full documentary we might come to realise that there is all sorts of extra context present that completely changes the nature or reliability of these revelations.

Thirdly, Norma McCorvey didn’t just convert to Evangelical Christianity.

Approximately 22 years ago she took another step in her personal faith journey when she converted to Catholic Christianity.

Anyone who knows Catholicism will know that this is definitely not an easy or glamorous step to take.

They will also know that this is definitely not the path to follow if your conversion journey is just a scam for making money.

Fourthly, people who knew McCorvey well are questioning these claims.

One of the important details that has come out in the past few days, from the people who knew McCorvey well, are the claims that she did a lot of pro-life speaking work without ever getting paid.

This could, of course, be explained away as part of a complicated and cunning ruse to appear altruistic, but it also equally casts doubts about whether there isn’t in fact far more to this story than the documentary makers are claiming.

Fifthly, Norma McCorvey is unable to correct any of the claims being made about her as a result of this documentary.

Because she has been dead for several years now there is simply no way for us to get a final word from the woman herself about this documentary.

This may turn out to be unnecessary, or it might turn out to be quite an important factor if serious questions are raised by what is presented in the final documentary.

Sixthly, even if McCorvey did lie and con the pro-life movement it doesn’t change a thing about the gravely unethical nature of abortion.

The pro-life movement is not, and had never been about the many personalities who have been part of this important fight for human rights.

Even if it turns out that Norma McCorvey conducted an elaborate and long running fraud in order to victimise well-meaning pro-lifers with cruel and greedy intent, that still doesn’t change the fact that abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.

If someone dishonestly attached themselves to the civil rights movement for personal gain, their act of immoral behaviour would have no bearing whatsoever on the importance or truth of that particular struggle either.

It also has no bearing on the serious legal procedural questions about the Roe v Wade Supreme Court case either - as some will no doubt try and claim now.

Finally, if this claim turns out to be entirely true then it raises some serious questions about the pro-choice movement.

A lot of abortion lobbyists have been crowing about this story since its release, as if it is some sort of fatal blow to the pro-life ethic and movement.

That’s just a lot of hot air and politically motivated bluster however.

At worst, this would raise questions about whether pro-lifers have been far too trusting in their kindness and acceptance of broken people (hardly a a bad thing to be infamous for).

It might also raise questions about whether or not one or two former leaders in our movement conducted themselves as prudently as they could have decades ago.

What this does do though, is raise some much more pressing issues for abortion lobbyists if these revelations turn out to be true.

What does it say about the pro-choice movement that one of their own was willing to conduct a decades long lie and financial scam in order to victimise and defraud caring people of money?

Surely it would also invite the obvious question ‘did McCorvey act alone in this act of fraud, or was she put up to it, or possibly even working with other members of the pro-choice movement the whole time?’

The one question that bothers me most about all of this...

If this really was just a simple act of fraud, why did Norma McCorvey so drastically change her life and do things that had no obvious benefit, for decades, and then only wait until the final months of her life to quietly admit her wrongdoing to a filmmaker?

If McCorvey really was the dedicated and greedy lifelong supporter of abortion that many abortion activists are now claiming she always was, why didn’t she reveal her deception much sooner and more publicly?

Not only could this sort of revelation have been timed to inflict major harm on pro-life political efforts in the USA, but it would have also netted McCorvey a new and much larger financial windfall that she would have been alive to enjoy.

I guess only time will tell, and even then we may still not fully understand the truth of her complicated life, but one thing is for sure: regardless of the truth about Norma McCorvey, abortion isn’t any less unethical or repugnant than it was before this story broke.