‘Roe’ Conversion Distracts Abortion Rights Activists

WASHINGTON —  Beset by a flurry of setbacks on Capitol Hill, abortion rights advocates now face a new headache: the splashy defection of “Jane Roe.”

As with all abortion matters, those in favor and those against have opposing views about the impact of Norma McCorvey’s decision to join forces with the anti-abortion Operation Rescue. She was the plaintiff in the 1973 Supreme Court case that gave women the right to abortions.

Jubilant anti-abortion leaders said McCorvey’s change of heart is a blow to her former allies.

“I don’t think there is any question about the fact that the timing could not have been worse for the pro-abortion movement,” Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition’s executive director, said Friday.

“It’s just one more straw that breaks the camel’s back of the pro-choice movement on Capitol Hill,” Reed said. “It’s a momentum robber, it’s a demoralizer, it’s distracting, it’s one more fight that you’d rather not get into if you’re a pro-abortion lobbyist.”

On the other side, abortion-rights activists called attention to McCorvey’s statement that she still supports a woman’s right to an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, even while opposing second-trimester abortions.

“The fact she still feels that abortion should be safe and legal [in the first three months] makes sort of strange bedfellows with her and Operation Rescue and that probably will limit their ability to exploit her,” said Ann Stone, chairwoman of Republicans for Choice, the nation’s largest GOP abortion rights organization.

The abortion rights activists also contend that McCorvey’s decision is a personal one that won’t affect the battles being waged in Congress and statehouses around the nation.

President Clinton said in an interview aired on MTV Friday night that McCorvey’s decision was personal, a choice that abortion rights advocates say every woman should be allowed to make.

“There is a wholesale assault on the right to choose going on in the Congress now in all kinds of little, indirect ways,” Clinton said. “And I hope we can beat it back because . . . I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”

As for his own efforts to defend women’s right to abortion, Clinton said: “I think I’m doing everything I can. I certainly have made it absolutely clear where I stand. I have resisted the attempts in the Congress to take away the rights of choice to women in the [military] service, to women who work for the federal government.”

Last week, the Senate voted to bar the use of government money to pay for abortions for federal workers, except in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s health is at stake.

The House, meanwhile, approved measures that would let states deny Medicaid funds for abortions for poor women in cases of rape or incest, ban federal human embryo research outside the womb and allow medical schools not to provide abortion training to their students.

McCorvey’s lesbianism, past drug abuse and alcoholism may make some in the anti-abortion movement reluctant to showcase her. “It may take time, but [God] will change her heart” regarding lesbianism, Operation Rescue member Eva Idl said Friday in Dallas.