Roe vs. Wade redux

7/11/2003

POOR Norma McCorvey.

Thirty years ago she was the Jane Roe in Roe vs. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that guaranteed a pregnant woman's right to choose abortion.

A decade ago the anti-abortion folks changed her mind. Now she's leading the charge to get rid of freedom of choice.

Ms. McCorvey makes much of her regrets over her abortion. That is nothing singular. Rare is the woman who doesn't have regrets. But life sometimes presents multiple bad choices.

One uses one's best judgment and moves on. But sadly, not Ms. McCorvey, a limelight-loving woman of many moods, who went public about Roe in 1980 and with much heralding, moved to the other side 10 years ago.

Fortunately for her, and for all American women, a federal district court in Texas tossed out her request that it reconsider Roe vs. Wade decades after the fact.

It's beyond common sense, as well as political sense, to think abortion choice could be so easily set aside. Most Americans believe in it, though some would limit the circumstances of its exercise.

Yet those opposed to abortion, like the Hamas organization in the Middle East, never give up. And, imbued with fanatic zeal, they probably won't. This means that today's young women, and tomorrow's, can't afford to take yesterday's gains for granted.