On the Passing of an Icon: Norma McCorvey

A week ago Saturday Norma McCorvey died at the age of 69. On February 25, she was laid to rest in Katy, Texas.

Norma is truly an icon of our time. If you don’t immediately recognize her name, you may know her better as Jane Roe, the plaintiff in the most far-reaching, and well-known court case in America. Roe v. Wade is a shibboleth of our time. For 44 years, it has been the dark star around which our world devolves.

The gravitational pull of Roe vs. Wade exerts its power on almost everything in our culture. The practice of medicine, the polarizing of a people, the definition of human personhood, the exercise of free speech, the concept of human rights, the natural bond between father and child, the legal protections for a child in the womb, and for her pregnant mother, the notion of privacy, tax policy, US foreign aid, and the entire trajectory of party politics… all of these have been stretched and distorted by a force-field centered on Norma McCorvey.

But here’s a curious fact found in her obituary: Her funeral was officiated by Father Frank Povone. Yes, the National Director of Priests for Life led the congregation in a funeral for Jane Roe. Hers is a tale that must be told.

As an icon of our times, Norma McCorvey is not a still photograph from 1973. She is a moving picture, the story of a life unfolding. We do a grave disservice to her, or anyone, if we judge their entire story from a momentary photograph.

Norma Nelson’s story begins in a troubled home. A violently alcoholic mother and sexual abuse by a relative led to reform school from the time she was 11. Her parents divorced when she was 13. She dropped out of High School at 15, ran away from home, and married Elwood McCorvey when she was 16.

That marriage dissolved while she was still pregnant with their first child, Melissa, who was signed over to her mother. A second child came by another father who raised the child without contact from Norma. Then, in 1969, a third child was conceived by yet another man.

Norma asked her doctor to put her in touch with an attorney to help her give the child up for adoption. Instead, he referred her to Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, two young lawyers looking for a vulnerable pregnant woman who would help them make history.

Her attorneys met with her three or four times. First, over a pitcher of beer, they convinced her to be the plaintiff in a case they were preparing. The last time, she signed an affidavit without reading it. It claimed that she had been gang raped and that she wanted an abortion. Both were lies.

That was the last time they ever met. They never helped her with an adoption. They didn’t offer her help for her drug and alcohol abuse, or help her get housing (she was living in a park). They had what they wanted: her signature on a piece of paper. It was their ticket to fame and the advancement of their cause.

It was March 17, 1970 and she was back on her own. That same year she gave birth to her third child and offered her up for adoption. That’s right. Norma McCorvey, the icon of abortion rights, never had an abortion. At the time she signed the affidavit, she didn’t even know exactly what it was.

Almost three years later, on January 22, 1973, she read the headlines about how Roe vs. Wade swept away nearly every state law concerning abortion. She had been unaware that her case ever went any farther after signing the affidavit.

Aside from the affidavit, there is no record at all in the case of Roe vs. Wade. There was no written discovery, no interrogatories, no document requests, no depositions, and no expert reports. Norma McCorvey never appeared in court. She was never notified of her case’s progress, or consulted for her wishes or strategic input.

Had she ever been asked a single question under oath, her case would have been dismissed before it ever got out of Dallas. But, as incredible as it may seem, her case percolated through the judicial machinery of Texas, District courts, Appeal Courts, and finally the Supreme court of the United States without either her participation or her knowledge.

At first she remained the anonymous Jane Roe. But soon she decided to cash in on her fame. By publicly identifying herself as Jane Roe, she became employable in any abortion clinic she wanted, and was the darling of pro-abortion rallies.

But her work in abortion clinics revealed to her what abortion actually was. After about a decade, she began to tell her story of being a pawn in the abortion-legalizing game. After two decades, she began to regret the legalization of abortion itself.

It was a little girl by the name of Emily who touched her heart with love and hope. Her mother worked next door to Norma’s abortion clinic. In 1995 Emily started visiting her regularly. It was her innocence, acceptance and love that broke through years of hurt and self-defense.

One day Norma accepted Emily’s invitation to come with her to church. Her experience of forgiveness was so powerful that her life took a 180 degree turn. Baptized by Rev. Flip Benton, the director of Operation Rescue, she left behind decades of abortion advocacy.

By 1997 she was received into the Roman Catholic church and spent the rest of her life trying to reverse the case that bore her name. On March 2, 2000, thirty years after she signed the unread affidavit prepared by Sarah Weddington, Norma filed an affidavit of her own. You should read it.

This affidavit was her opening statement in a legal battle to overturn Roe vs. Wade. After spending her final two decades speaking at pro-life rallies, testifying before the U.S. Senate, and trying unsuccessfully to correct the record, she now rests in peace.

Hers is a story that you should know. It encompasses much that is wrong with our culture. But it also encompasses much that can make it right again. It begins in a childhood that should not be wished upon anyone. It extends into a life out of control and searching for meaning. It ends in the hope of redemption and new meaning and peace.

Rest in peace, Norma. Your moving icon shows us all that redemption is never an empty hope.

See Also:
Wyoming Tribune Eagle: shortened version

Factual, but Fake: Untangling a Confusion

Recently, I was asked to take a survey from the Missouri School of Journalism. It was seeking to understand how people like me evaluated the credibility of news sources. But it never got around to asking how. It only asked what sources I trusted and where I fell in the political spectrum. If you want to know how, read on.

The President’s news conference last Thursday put the question in stark relief. In a particularly telling exchange with a reporter from CNN, the President said, “The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake.” For some, this statement is utterly baffling, causing heads to explode. For others, it captures the problem in a perfect paradox.

To help my friends with exploding heads, let me offer a few reflections to reconcile the contradiction. Perhaps along the way we can understand one another better and find a more productive civil discourse. How is it possible that anyone can call a news story “fake” when the facts themselves are true? The answer can be summed up in four words: context, framing, balance, and comparison.

Let’s take them in reverse order. The first thing to remember in every conversation about politicians or public policy, is that judgments are comparative and not absolute. All politics is an attempt to strike a fair balance between any number of competing interests.

The U.S. Constitution was designed to put them in opposition to each other so that through public discussion we can come to a livable balance. States’ rights vs. Federal power, Executive branch vs. Judicial and Legislative, Church vs. State, and many others all meet in a glorious scrum of ideas.

Sadly, the evolution of the electronic media has increasingly undermined meaningful discussion. Neil Postman, in his brilliant book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, compares the depth of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of the mid-19th century with the shallow thinking and short attention-spans of today’s interlocutors. It isn’t pretty.

While the print media at least possesses an inherent potential to be more thoughtful than cable news, this promise is largely dissipated. Instead of informing our sound-bite culture with a more nuanced analysis, they have themselves become bumper-sticker parodies of the evening news.

In a sound-bite culture, nuanced comparison is transmogrified into bombastic false dichotomies between absolute good and absolute evil. These, in turn, stir up powerful emotions that produce more heat than light. But they also produce money. Media moguls know how to exploit the emotions of their patrons to pad the bottom line. Worse still, politicians encourage these false dichotomies to stir up panicked support for their cause du jour.

Consider recent elections. Candidates bring up every possible unsavory detail of an opponent’s words and actions. Then they conclude with a rhetorical flourish like, “how could anybody possibly support that?” But, of course, no reasonable person does – not even those who pulled the lever for that candidate.

Voters do not – or, at least, should not -- support a person because of their character flaws, but in spite of them. Election is not a question of deciding who is good and who is evil. It is a matter of looking soberly at the good and evil of both candidates, or both policy proposals, and deciding which one, on balance, tips the scales more to one side or the other.

Balance is key. Not absolute loyalty. The election of people to office is neither the anointing of a savior, nor the destruction of a devil. It is weighing the strengths and weaknesses of any course of action and judging which is better and which worse. In a world where balance is key, it is necessary that all of the facts be placed in the scales, and not just some of them.

People stop listening to news outlets, not because they occasionally repeat a lie. These can be corrected. But a consistent pattern of refusing to report the facts of both sides leaves them hungry. Here is what mainstream journalism needs to understand and take to heart if they ever hope to fulfill their duty as the fourth estate.

Questions like that of the CNN reporter in Thursday’s press conference simply miss the point. Incessantly asking, “can you prove that I said anything wrong?” misses the more important question, “what necessary information have you left out of the story?”

Serious reflection on this question would go a long way toward helping mainstream journalism understand why conservatives are drawn to news sources outside of the mainstream. Thoughtful people are not looking for alternative facts. They are seeking the rest of the facts. If you want to keep them reading your papers and listening to your broadcasts, give them all the facts and not only half of them.

Balance is undermined not only by omitting certain facts, but also by omitting certain words. George Orwell put his finger on this phenomenon in his dystopian novel, 1984. There, “newspeak” was the mandated language of the pressroom. By expunging certain words from the dictionary and inventing others, Oceana not only created facts, they controlled the framework of thought, limiting the very thoughts that are possible.

While 1984 is fiction, it is far from fantasy. In our day, the mainstream media is the Ministry of Truth. Accordingly, the Associated Press keeps an ever-evolving dictionary of approved words and expressions and their corresponding forbidden words. Just look at two of the hot-button issues of our day.

According to the AP stylebook, the terms “pro-abortion” and “abortionist” are never to be used. The preferred terms are “abortion rights” and “abortion practitioner.” This word choice is clearly designed to cast one side in a more favorable light. But the same stylebook mandates that someone who calls themselves pro-life, must be referred to as “anti-abortion.”

We find similar framework bias in words about marriage. According to the GLAAD Media Reference Guide, both AP and Reuters stipulates that the term “sexual preference” is proscribed, along with “gay lifestyle.” These are always to be replaced by “sexual orientation.”

Obviously, GLAAD’s agenda is advanced by down-playing choices and behaviors. But for the AP and Reuters to adopt the word preferences of a special interest group into their official guide is biased journalism plain and simple.

Finally, weighing facts in the balance requires careful attention to context. If somebody has killed a man, it is important to know whether this was in the line of duty, or in a bar room brawl. The same goes for infractions against the incredibly complex rules of American government.

Take, for example, the case of Michael Flynn. It has been stipulated as fact that he contacted his Russian counterpart before being sworn in as National Security Advisor. This is against the rules. But it is also true that the Logan Act has been regularly violated for over two centuries. When reporting on the Flynn affair, failure to include this fact turns the entire story into fake news.

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you will never fool all of the people all of the time.” Whether or not honest Abe said these words, they contain a wisdom that cuts two ways.

On the one hand, it should be a comfort to everyone that the occasional false narrative will not long prevail. Whether it is misreporting by the New York Times, or by the Onion, some will believe it initially, but eventually the truth will prevail.

On the other hand, when vital information is consistently withheld in order to promote a progressive agenda over a conservative one, people will eventually come to distrust everything that comes from that news source, and seek another outlet altogether.

Such asymmetrical reporting is the greatest contributor to the polarization of the American people. By imposing one framework over another, and deliberately throwing off the balance, it sabotages civil discourse. The best thing we can do to prevent polarization is for every news outlet to strive for a full and fair reporting of every relevant detail.

This requires editors who actively seek out writings from all sides of the spectrum. It requires reporters who not only seek an occasional quote from the other side, but actually spend enough time with their ideological opposites that they can think within their framework and speak in their language.

We may not be able to change the culture on the pages of the New York Times, but each and every one of us can change the culture on our Facebook page. Remember, it is about comparison and balance, not absolute party loyalty. Admit weaknesses. Repudiate the inexcusable actions of your candidate. Seek to understand the framework and word-choice of the other side.

In so doing you will be joining the revolution and striking a blow for civil discourse. America can come together one civil conversation at a time.

True Freedom Is Common Ground

Last Thursday (2-9-17), the Senate Agriculture committee heard testimony for nearly four hours in consideration of two “social issue” bills. I drove to Cheyenne for the occasion, and what I saw and heard is worth noting.

The very fact that they were heard at all is a testament to the Senate President, Eli Bebout’s integrity. He found a way to schedule these important bills in the middle of an otherwise hectic legislative season. It seems I owe him a public apology. In hindsight, last week’s article on social issues was less charitable than it should have been. Thank you, President Bebout.

The committee first dealt with HB 116 “Abortion Amendments.” This bill seeks to amend Wyoming Statute 35-6-115 which says:

“Whoever sells, transfers, distributes or gives away any live or viable aborted child for any form of experimentation is guilty of a felony punishable by a fine of not less than ten thousand dollars and by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than fourteen years. Any person consenting, aiding or abetting such sale, transfer, distribution or other unlawful disposition of an aborted child is guilty of a felony punishable by a fine of not less than ten thousand dollars and by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than fourteen years or both, and shall also be subject to prosecution for violation of any other criminal statute.”

Let me emphasize, the above paragraph already exists in Wyoming law, and has for quite a while. Nothing in HB 116 suggested any new or increased fines, nor change in prison time, nor does it broaden the people to whom this may apply. In fact, it narrows the people who can be charged with this crime.

Currently, nobody at all is allowed to sell, transfer, distribute, or give away an aborted child. HB 116 adds exemptions which would give the child’s parents the right to do so. I’m not sure why anybody would oppose that change, but many did.

The only other change to the existing statute is that, where the current law applies to a “aborted child,” HB 116 would add the phrase, “or any tissue or cells from an aborted child.” When this Wyoming law was written decades ago, who could have imagined that body parts would be trafficked instead of an intact body. But such is the world we live in.

That’s it. There are only two changes suggested: one clarifying that if an aborted child cannot be experimented on whole, it shouldn’t be parted out either. Second, the granting of additional rights to the child’s parents. I naively thought that this bill would be simple to consider. It was not.

Rather, over the course of two and a half hours, many spoke for and against the existing statute, but few spoke to the two actual amendments. More than anything, the evening revealed how unsettled and sensitive is the subject of abortion. Forty-four years after the Supreme Court attempted to settle the abortion debate once and for all, we are no closer to unity now than we were in 1973.

Worse than that, there is pain. You could hear it in brittle voices, stifled tears, choked words. We need to find a path toward health and healing. The raw exercise of judicial power has not delivered what it promised. Let us come together in tenderness and love to care for those who have been broken. Mutual accusations are not the remedy. Understanding, forgiveness and care are.

For the next hour, the committee heard comments on HB 182 Abortion Ultrasound. This bill does not amend existing laws, but proposes a new one. It creates a new right for women. If HB 182 passes, every woman in the state of Wyoming would have the right to be informed by an abortion provider that she may see an active ultrasound if she so desires. Currently, this right does not exist.

But why should it be necessary for the government to make a law about it? This is a legitimate question and deserves a plain answer. After all, isn’t it already common practice among physicians to give every and all pertinent details before any medical procedure?

Before I could get a flu shot, I had to sign a paper that I was informed of my HIPAA rights, and before my two-year-old had work in his baby teeth, we were meticulously informed of the tiny chance that he could die.

Examples like those above could be multiplied ad infinitum. But, while it may be common practice in every other medical procedure, it is not in the case of abortion. Even where an ultrasound machine is used in the course of an abortion, standard operating procedure is to prevent the patient from seeing the screen.

It is argued that this is because of an agreement between an abortionist and his patient. But unless she is actually consulted about the decision, how can there be an agreement? In HB 182, if she is consulted, she can say so by a simple signature.

In order to check into my hotel room, I have to sign a piece of paper saying that I have been informed of the no-smoking and no-pets policy. Is a medical procedure less important than a night at the Super-8?

Yet, there are numerous documented cases where abortionists failed even to ask this basic question. Once or twice might be an oversight. But uncountable reports from women who were never given this basic medical courtesy, compels the government to step in and assure her rights.

Yes. I am in favor of granting women their rights -- all women, all their rights. If we are going to talk about the right to choose, we must also talk about the right to a fully informed choice – and not withhold pertinent information out of fear that she may not choose as I would. If we want to talk about the right to life, we must also talk about the right to have help and support in caring for that life.

I’m willing to have this conversation. Let’s work together to take away all ignorance and every coercion from women by taking responsibility as individuals and as a society. Let’s give women real choices and help them to take care of their children after they are born. Let’s get together and work together to support her in the long term.

First, let us strengthen her protections against rape. Then, let us strengthen laws which support marriage. Where these fail, let us let’s work together to take away this coercion. Let’s come together to learn what makes these women think they have no choice. Let’s come together to take away these fears and impossible circumstances and give her back her real choice.

Freedom is not just the ability to do what your fears forced you to do. Freedom is only free when fear and ignorance are chased away and you are free to live up to your highest ideals. That’s human flourishing.



See Also:
Wyoming Tribune Eagle: shortened version

Are Social Issues Really Distractions?

In an article filed last Saturday (“State leaders say social issue bills sidetrack Legislature,” Casper Star Tribune, January 28, 2017), Governor Mead and Senate President Eli Bebout are cited as warning “that social issue legislation could distract lawmakers from more pressing issues.”

This raises a question. Which bills, exactly, are they referring to? If Laura Hancock is representing their position accurately, they would be referring to five second amendment bills, three pro-life bills, two obscenity bills, and a religious freedom bill, among others.

It is curious that there is no mention of the HB 212 which would strip virtually all references to man and woman, husband and wife, out of Wyoming law. Neither does it mention SF 153 which would have injected a new and ill-defined legal category, “sexual orientation or gender identity,” into Wyoming law. Are these not social issues too? Whether these are omitted by our Republican leadership or by Ms. Hancock remains unclear.

What seems clear is that some Republican leadership considers pro-life, pro-family, and pro-gun issues to be distractions and unimportant. That is a shame.

What, then, do they consider more important? Money is more important, namely the $156 million budget deficit and the $400 million school deficit. To be sure, these are important and daunting problems. But there are several things that should be said in response.

First, last January was the biennial Budget Session. At that time, many legislators saw today’s short-falls on the horizon and tried to address them before they became a problem. But time and again their concerns were minimized while additional spending was authorized. Meanwhile, a number of important social issues were kept off the floor because the budget was more important.

Shall we now turn 2017 into another Budget Session, and put off important social considerations yet again? That would defer them for another two years, assuming we don’t repeat the same budget mistakes in 2018.

Second, we should remember that the government of the state of Wyoming is primarily about securing our freedoms -- not spending our money. The first 18 sections of Wyoming’s constitution cover subjects such as equality, humane treatment of people, religious liberty, and the like. Money is not mentioned until the 19th section, and there it is a restriction on spending, not a mandate to spend.

Likewise the Constitution of the United States of America reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility…” These are all rightly characterized as “social issues.” They are the necessary topics to discuss in order to build a just and peaceful society.

Especially at a time of significant social upheaval, and when the federal courts have declared significant portions of Wyoming law unconstitutional, we need to set aside the time to talk and reason and consider our state’s response to the federal challenges to states’ rights. If we cannot do this in the state house, where exactly can we talk about these matters and when?

Third, to drive a wedge between social issues and budgetary issues is to ignore to the economic implications of social engineering. If you think that gun bills are irrelevant to budget considerations, look at the consequences of stripping away all gun rights. Consider how the city of Chicago pays the cost in law enforcement dollars and in lives.

Again, if you think that recreational drug legalization is a pure “social issue” talk to any law enforcement officer or teacher about what they see in the classrooms, and in the domestic violence calls that they respond to. Tinkering with social law has expensive and sometimes deadly consequences.

“A Fifty-State Survey of the Cost of Family Fragmentation” (Regent University Law Review, 12-31-12) calculated that Wyoming spent $112 million dollars from 2007-2011 as a direct result of broken families. This only counts the monetary cost of three specific programs. It cannot even begin to count the pain and suffering of the parents and the children who could have been helped by stronger support for their families.

Addressing family life and passing laws which support the family, rather than tearing it down, can potentially save the state of Wyoming millions of dollars per year. For this reason alone, it is short-sighted to dismiss social concerns in favor of budget concerns. Moreover, it is not only families that have concrete monetary value for the state of Wyoming, so also do churches and church organizations, private schools, adoption agencies, soup kitchens, nonprofit hospitals, and the list goes on.

Such mediating institutions produce educated citizens and ethical businessmen. They support at-risk families and work against substance abuse. They care for the poor and work to rebuild broken families. And they do all of this at zero cost to the government. Imagine what it would cost the state of Wyoming if we had to do all this work on the government dime.

Without protection for their First Amendment rights, many of these institutions are at serious risk. Already, we have seen states like Illinois and Massachusetts shut down church adoption agencies. Who has stepped up to fill the void? No one.

It is in the interest of the state that we pass laws to prevent the dismantling or weakening of these vital mediating institutions. They serve as a buffer between the vast and clumsy power of the government and the individual needs of people in everyday life. They also are the most agile and economic way to take care of the countless unique situations encountered in daily life. If we do not protect and promote these mediating institutions, there will be two predictable consequences, one for every citizen, and one for the state as a whole.

First, for every mediating institution that is forced out of business, the state will have that much more involvement in the minutiae of your daily life. Just consider all the places government intrudes when a single marriage falls apart. The court must be consulted on everything from the monthly budget to vacation plans.

Second, as state bureaucracies move in the fill the void, they will do ham-handedly, and at double or triple the cost, what families and churches do easily with little money. Think about it. Is a state-run orphanage, by any stretch of the imagination, as good at raising children as the simplest and poorest of married couples?

So, by all means address the budgetary issues which should have been handled last January. But let’s quit pretending that money issues are more important than everything else. It simply isn’t true.

See Also:
Wyoming Tribune Eagle: shortened version
Casper Star Tribune: letter to the editor