Quick Hit: Jane Roe arrested outside of Sotomayor hearing
How 'bout that. Norma McCorvey was arrested outside of Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearing today with other anti-choice protesters. According to WashPo, she made it into the chambers when she start yelling while Sen. Al Franken was speaking.
While most of you probably know, McCorvey served as the plaintiff in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the U.S., only later to become a spokesperson for the anti-choice movement.
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I think it was bell hooks in Killing Rage who had a brief, but I thought really great analysis of the role that Norma McCorvey played in relation to Sarah Weddington and the other lawyers involved in Roe v. Wade. I'll find the exact chapter, book, citation later on when I've got access to my bookshelf. It helped me think through McCorvey's role before, during and after the case.
Oops, I meant to italicize the title, but got my tags wrong.
Well, after spending quite some time leafing through Killing Rage, I'm pretty sure I got my citation wrong. I've been doing a lot of reading over the past few months and now I have no idea where I came across a brilliant few paragraphs analyzing McCorvey and Roe.
So here's my synopsis of this mystery citation. It did take into account the potentially alienating nature of a class action suit on the parties supposedly represented. It also looked at strains of elitism in feminism (and there's where I think I linked it to bell hooks). And while the portion of the article (or book?) talked about McCorvey's own life experience and analyzed some of her statements, it also showed sensitivity to her as an individual, balancing the idea of individual agency with an acknowledgment that myriad social forces position and constrain individual actions.
If anyone else knows of any feminist analysis of McCorvey outside of Weddington's book, post authors or titles please! I always want to read more about this. I've just got to start taking notes or something so I can give credit where it's due.
Well, after spending quite some time leafing through Killing Rage, I'm pretty sure I got my citation wrong. I've been doing a lot of reading over the past few months and now I have no idea where I came across a brilliant few paragraphs analyzing McCorvey and Roe.
So here's my synopsis of this mystery citation. It did take into account the potentially alienating nature of a class action suit on the parties supposedly represented. It also looked at strains of elitism in feminism (and there's where I think I linked it to bell hooks). And while the portion of the article (or book?) talked about McCorvey's own life experience and analyzed some of her statements, it also showed sensitivity to her as an individual, balancing the idea of individual agency with an acknowledgment that myriad social forces position and constrain individual actions.
If anyone else knows of any feminist analysis of McCorvey outside of Weddington's book, post authors or titles please! I always want to read more about this. I've just got to start taking notes or something so I can give credit where it's due.
Well, after spending quite some time leafing through Killing Rage, I'm pretty sure I got my citation wrong. I've been doing a lot of reading over the past few months and now I have no idea where I came across a brilliant few paragraphs analyzing McCorvey and Roe.
So here's my synopsis of this mystery citation. It did take into account the potentially alienating nature of a class action suit on the parties supposedly represented. It also looked at strains of elitism in feminism (and there's where I think I linked it to bell hooks). And while the portion of the article (or book?) talked about McCorvey's own life experience and analyzed some of her statements, it also showed sensitivity to her as an individual, balancing the idea of individual agency with an acknowledgment that myriad social forces position and constrain individual actions.
If anyone else knows of any feminist analysis of McCorvey outside of Weddington's book, post authors or titles please! I always want to read more about this. I've just got to start taking notes or something so I can give credit where it's due.
You know, I've often wondered about her. I knew that she had become virulently anti-abortion and pro-life, and I always thought that something had to have happened-maybe just the whole mind-numbing, soul destroying process that is litigation. I worked for a legal office that does only high impact litigation, if they take cases. And I sometimes got a glimpse of how lawyers who are fighting for a cause using high impact litigation treat their client: some of them approach clients with a "this is bigger than YOU," attitude, and while some clients get on board with that, some are overwhelmed and when they think about it later, they wonder whether any of the hcoices made were really their own.
In the end, it's such a personal choice to make, that the fact it became this huge spectacle (and the little I know of McCorvey's background and her relationship with the lawyers), I'm not too surprised.
Kahri, thanks for the reference to the book. I'll have to pick that up when I have a chance.
It is interesting that Roe speaks so adamantly against abortion, when she did not go through one herself, as her child was given up for adoption. Did she have an abortion after getting pregnant again does anyone know? That would make more sense.
How is protesting by breaking the law in an area they are not allowed to be going to convince pro-abortion activists to switch sides? I would be interested in talking to her and figuring out exactly what happened in her mind..
She said in an interview I saw in a documentary about abortion that she somehow saw an aborted fetus in person, I don't think she explained how she managed to do that, but it just looked so much like a human that she realized "They're killing babies" and turned tail.
Ah that does make sense, thank you for the clarification. I remember I accidently typed something wrong in on google images once when I was young and saw some pretty disgusting images. That can definatly be scarring.
She used to work in a clinic, and befriended the people from Operation Rescue who set up shop right next door (surprise!). I saw all of this in an interview she gave for the movie "Lake of Fire." It is really graphic but I recommend it.
That's the one, Lake of Fire. I couldn't make it through that movie, though. It just seemed a bit biased in favor of the anti-choice crowd, but I may have just been being overly-sensitive at the time.
Yes, I feel that way too. However, it does do a pretty good job of making the anti's look batshit crazy (which they are). Another good abortion documentary is "Unborn in the U.S.A." which also shows anti's as their crazy selves!
Ah, thank you. Ill try to watch that sometime. If I can, not sure I could get through it.
Salon has a nice take on this.
From the Salon link, McCorvey's reason for switching was, "They could have been nice to me instead of treating me like an idiot." It supports the sense I got, reading I Am Roe and articles about her conversion, that she found a genuine feeling of community and long-term connection from the particular pro-"life" people she ended up with, a sense that she hadn't gotten from the lawyers or other pro-choicers. Stuff like, IIRC, they completely dropped out of her life unless they needed her to do things for the case. That's probably just par for the course (thanks zp27 for your comment). Of course, it wasn't their job to be her BFF. I do think that the approach of people like Grayson Dempsey and Aspen Baker will help girls and women today who might feel a similar need for support beyond the technicalities of being able to get an abortion.
Yeah-I think that's a big issue with lawyers. Treating your clients in a professional manner, but not treating them like a means to an end. All in all, you have to be zealous for your client because they're a person, not because you want to make a point.
You know, reading that, I'm kind of flashing on Linda Lovelace and her experience with anti-pornography forces. It's that same sense that a person was caught up in forces larger than herself and later rejected them because it turned out the people involved were more concerned with the cause than with her as a person. Admittedly, I approve of the outcome of Roe's case than Lovelace's, but it strikes me as the same kind of phenomenon.
I personally felt "Lake of Fire" was implicitly pro-choice, though as I recall it avoided editorial narration and allowed advocates of opposing positions to speak for themselves. While I do not think they generally picked enough of the more coherent opponents of abortion rights to interview, their decision to speak with some anti-abortion rights fanatics (including practitioners of or supporters of violence) and with a lot of anti-abortion rights people who heavily emphasized their religious objections was appropriate, even if some of the more mainstream opponents of abortion rights disapproved of this choice. These interviewees, or the constituencies with which they are associated, have, after all, been important actors affecting the status of abortion rights and the dialogue about them in America.
The McCorvey interview included in "Lake of Fire" is revealing. As other commenters have suggested, the atmosphere of warmth and acceptance with which she was received by the Operation Rescue organizers comes across as more influential in her change of views than any process of reasoning or research. Having a cause and a supportive group around which to orient one's sense of identity can be very comforting, regardless of the merits of the cause.
Advocates of secular and feminist values, I think, would improve our ability to spread these ideas if we attend to the more-or-less universal need for community that religious groups, liberal and conservative, tend to recognize. (I think feminist and secular activists do tend to take communal needs seriously within their organizations, but that approach amounts largely to providing support to those who already agree and are motivated.) The Obama campaign last year seemed to involve a much larger segment of the public in a movement that stood up for these values to some degree. There are probably lessons to be learned from that success. What happens, though, between election years?