and ain't I a woman?

More than Jane Roe

Abortion rights and wrongs

US citizen Norma McCorvey has "found God". In the ordinary course of events, individuals change their minds about their religious and political outlooks every day. This can work both ways. For example, we all know people who were once progressive but who have now changed their views. On the other hand, many who formerly held reactionary views on, say, abortion or the environment, have changed their minds and become active in the progressive movement.
These changes of heart are due to a variety of factors — people's experience of oppression in their everyday lives and contact with political movements struggling for change on the one hand, or the pressures of mainstream society to act "normal" and accept your lot in life on the other.
Capitalist society has a whole arsenal at its disposal, ranging from the subtle to the overt, in its bid to enforce acceptance of injustice and discrimination. These weapons are used more blatantly when people have been politicised and are reacting against their oppression.
US politics and society are currently dominated by an economy which is in a hole. In the context of ordinary working people being squeezed to pay for this, the ideological offensive is very strong indeed. This results in some people who were once progressive taking a more conservative stance on social issues.
Norma McCorvey's change of heart has achieved international prominence. McCorvey is better known as "Jane Roe", the woman in whose name the landmark US abortion ruling, Roe vs Wade, was made. The suit was a class action — the fact that McCorvey may now have changed her mind will have no effect on the ruling.
However, McCorvey's announcement, the subsequent relinquishing of her job at an abortion clinic and her baptism by the national head of the anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue, have been used as an ideological weapon in the anti-abortion rights crusade. Anti-abortion campaigners have hailed it at a time when the right in the US is making further progress in limiting abortion rights legislatively.
McCorvey's decision to join the anti-choice forces boosts their confidence.
However, the issue remains one of abortion rights. At the same time as McCorvey has changed her mind, there remains both in the US and internationally a movement committed to attaining full reproductive rights for women.
This movement, while it may have lost one individual, is made up of more than Jane Roe. It is a dynamic and strong movement, prepared to take on the struggle. It is a movement which has continued and will continue to change attitudes and win people over to the perspective that abortion is every woman's right to choose.
By Kath Gelber