Jerry Newcombe spent his June 21 WorldNetDaily column criticizing the group Jane’s Revenge for alleged vandalism of “crisis pregnancy centers,” then defended the group’s alleged namesake:
And this damage is being done in the name of Jane Roe? As the record shows, Jane Roe’s identity was revealed in 1987, and her name was Norma McCorvey. It turns out McCorvey had not been raped (as claimed in the case). She had gotten pregnant from her boyfriend, and she just wanted an abortion.
ACLU attorney Sarah Weddington lied to her as she assured McCorvey she could get an abortion. But what Weddington really wanted was McCorvey’s participation in what became Roe v. Wade.
Then in the late 1990s, something amazing happened. Norma McCorvey made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and came to oppose abortion. Thus, Roe came to agree with Wade. Henry Wade had been the District Attorney of Dallas County, and Roe v. Wade challenged Texas’s pro-life law.
Norma McCorvey wrote her story in her 1997 book “Won By Love” (with co-author Gary Thomas). The subtitle of that book is “Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade Speaks Out for the Unborn as She Shares Her New Conviction for Life.”
And now, in the name of Jane Roe, anarchists and Antifa-types are carrying out acts of vandalism and damage of pregnancy centers that simply exist to provide loving alternatives to abortion.
Just one problem: McCorvey recanted pretty much all of her anti-abortion activism before her death, saying that she did it for the money. As we documented, the ConWeb attacked the film in which McCorvey recanted her anti-abortion leanings and its director, claiming without evidence that she was being manipulated. Newcombe knows all this because he wrote a column bashing the film and calling on Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger — who was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting to blow up an abortion clinic in the 1980s — to handwave McCorvey’s more damaging claims.
Nevertherless, Newcombe called on another anti-abortion activist to vouch for McCorvey:
One man who knew McCorvey, who died in 2017, is Father Frank Pavone, the president of Priests for Life. He even baptized her and spent time sharing Scriptures and church teaching with her.
I asked him for a comment on the former “Jane Roe” since these groups are doing damage to try and disrupt pro-life work in her name.
Father Pavone told me: “As for Norma McCorvey, hers was a life of repentance, not of revenge. She wouldn’t have needed to take ‘revenge’ on pro-life people anyway, because she was one of us. She would have abhorred the way the pro-abortion people are acting now. In fact, she didn’t like them even when she was on their side. She thought they were arrogant and disrespectful of her.”
Pavone was quoted as attacking the McCorvey film in a CNSNews.com column by Alveda King, insisting that the filmmakers took her out of context. Newcombe didn’t mention that either.
It seems that Newcombe is trying to memory-hole the McCorvey film because she’s much more valuable as an anti-abortion token, even in death. It’s a somewhat slightly less bad take than the last one we noted.