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Monday, October 19, 1998

A second religious conversion for 'Jane Roe' of Roe vs. Wade

By RICHARD N. OSTLING

Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) - For years her life has been a twisted path. Its latest turn, Norma McCorvey says, received a nudge from heaven.

In 1970 she was "Jane Roe," an anonymous woman who said she had been raped and needed an abortion. Three years later she was the winning plaintiff in Roe vs. Wade, the epochal Supreme Court case that overturned all of the nation's abortion statutes.

During the 1980s, "Roe" revealed herself in interviews and a made-for-TV movie. She was really Norma McCorvey. She confessed that her tale of rape a decade before had been a lie; she was simply an unwed mother who later gave the child up for adoption.

In 1994 she published an autobiography that mingled pro-choice preachments with tell-all detail about dysfunctional parents, reform school, petty crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, an abusive husband, a second unwed pregnancy, attempted suicide and lesbianism.

She had dabbled in New Age and occult ideas, but in 1995 a new chapter came: She received Jesus and joined the Evangelical Protestants. She was baptized before network TV cameras by a most improbable mentor: the Rev. Philip ("Flip") Benham, national leader of the fervently anti-abortion Operation Rescue. "Jane Roe" joined his staff - and his cause.

Now, three years later, the Christian and the pro-life commitments have stuck. But at age 51, McCorvey has left Operation Rescue and has changed faiths, this time without hoopla.

After intensive instruction she received Roman Catholic confirmation on Aug. 17.

Her parish, St. Thomas Aquinas, is located near the modest bungalow stuffed with knickknacks where she has lived since 1970.

Joining the Catholic church is something of a homecoming, as well as a quest for calm after years of turbulence.

When she was a young girl in a conflict-ridden Texas family, McCorvey sometimes went to Jehovah's Witness meetings with her father but was far more comforted by the Catholic Masses her mother took her to occasionally.

"It was so beautiful and quiet. They seemed so much closer to God and I liked that, being as close as I could possibly be to God," she says in a voice as rough as her background.

The warm memories lingered despite later fury at her mother, who she says tricked her into signing away custody of her firstborn and then threw her out of the house. "My mom screamed, 'What did a lesbian know about raising a child?' I lost my child, and my home."

McCorvey's 1995 turning was largely the work of Benham, a onetime saloonkeeper who had experienced a radical religious conversion much like hers. He simply befriended her when Operation Rescue moved next door to the abortion clinic where she was working.

The moment of conversion, however, did not occur at the church Benham attended but at the nondenominational Hillcrest Church. There McCorvey walked forward one Saturday night to receive Jesus, under the spell of an evangelistic sermon by pastor Morris Sheats. She was to spend nearly three years at Hillcrest.

Working at Operation Rescue headquarters, meanwhile, McCorvey befriended many Catholics. She attended a Houston conference of Human Life International, a Catholic pro-life group, last April. "I felt serene there," she said. "I felt safe. And for me that's saying a lot."

There, she attended a Mass celebrated by Father Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, and she sensed "this is it. This is where I should be."

Something more mysterious was also at work.

McCorvey believes she sometimes experiences communications from God, not in an audible voice but specific directives nonetheless. "I started getting all these messages from the Lord saying, my child, you will soon be with me." She feared this meant her death was imminent. But one night last June the message became clear: "My child, I want you to come home to my church."

"I shot up out of bed. This just in from the Big Guy upstairs. He wants me to join the Roman Catholic Church." She e-mailed the news to Pavone, then sought Catholic instruction from Father Edward Robinson, a Dallas pro-life leader.

McCorvey began meeting the white-robed, 84-year-old priest in the library of a Dominican priory. He sent her away each time with a pile of reading matter.

"I am extremely impressed with her honesty and willingness to do the homework," Robinson says. "I have a clear field to work in." An eager learner, she brought four pages of questions to their first session.

For McCorvey, the person of Mary is especially attractive. "What took me by surprise was when I found out that Jesus Christ has founded this church for his Mother," she says. "The Blessed Virgin is a teacher, a mother. She's the queen. Without her there would have been no salvation for everyone."

And the pope? "It makes perfectly good sense to have one leader. It takes all the confusion out of it. Whatever he decides is done."

Her conversion to Catholicism hits a bit awkwardly for the Protestant publishing house, Thomas Nelson, which last January issued "Won By Love," McCorvey's account of her Evangelical conversion and her stand against abortion. The book ends with McCorvey happily involved with Operation Rescue and Hillcrest Church.

But she was never a conventional poster child for Evangelical religion.

Her language has cleaned up considerably but, she admits, "I still drop a cuss word now and then." She has cut down to two packs of cigarettes on a good day. She declares herself free of cocaine and alcohol addiction but still drinks a bit, limiting herself to a couple of Corona beers. "I know my limitations."

There's a more complex lifestyle issue. Years ago, McCorvey met Connie Gonzales, a store clerk who had caught her shoplifting. They developed into best friends, housemates and lovers. McCorvey says the relationship turned platonic in the early 1990s, and now that she's a Christian she believes same-sex behavior is wrong.

When the two friends continued to share a house, Flip Benham advised McCorvey to move out, fearing that she might rejoin the lesbian subculture. "Flip had a fit over the whole thing," she recalls. "He said he was my leader. I don't like for people to try to control me and I rebelled." Besides, "Pastor Sheats said if we could stand before God with a pure heart he would encourage us to stay living together."

She also criticizes Benham's recent tack, of having Operation Rescue demonstrate outside the Cathedral of Hope, a large Dallas church that caters to homosexuals. "I don't agree with the lesbians or the gays," she says, "but they have the right to attend the church of their choice and not be interrupted."

On abortion, too, she questions the effectiveness of Operation Rescue's militant tactics and now prefers to participate in silent monthly Catholic prayer vigils outside abortion clinics. "The Catholics are nonviolent. There is no storming into an abortion mill or chaining people to staircases. You accomplish nothing, and some say Operation Rescue set the movement back 20 years."

Benham also opposed McCorvey's decision last year to form the "Roe No More Ministry" and go out on the road as a pro-life speaker. Benham says she was not mature enough as a Christian and should be kept "under wraps."

Ronda Mackey, a fellow Operation Rescue worker who left with McCorvey to help with the new ministry, now has changed her mind and agrees it's too soon for McCorvey to become a platform personality. "She's still a baby Christian. It's an awful lot to ask."

Benham says simply, "I love her and she knows it, but I love her with the truth."

On abortion, though, Operation Rescue seems to have made a permanent impact. Says McCorvey, "I'm 100 per cent pro-life. I don't believe in abortion even in an extreme situation. If the woman is impregnated by a rapist, it's still a child. You're not to act as your own God." She'll be delivering that message in 14 speeches around the United States this fall.

Her new mentor, Robinson, says the speaking tours are a good idea, a way for her to make amends "for any complicity she had in this abortion business." McCorvey has been freed from guilt about her past, he says. "She is perfectly at peace."

Sheats is taking his convert's defection in stride. "People have to see their own journey. We just leave these things in the hands of God. We're grateful that God allowed her to cross our path... . I love her deeply."

McCorvey repays the compliment, saying, "Hillcrest will always be my home church. My testimony is basically Evangelical."

So then, what is she, Evangelical or Catholic? "I'm a Christian," she replies. "We all serve the same God."

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