The People Who Ended Roe Part 2

This is the second part of my two part series on The People Who Ended Roe. 

               

        Phyllis Schlafly speaking before Eagle Forum an organization she founded in 1972

Phyllis Schlafly was a wife, a mother, attorney, activist and author.  She was born Phyllis Stewart in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1924.  Her father was a machinist and mother a librarian.  They struggled economically during The Great Depression, but found a way pay for their daughters education in Catholic school.  Phyllis had one sister.

In 1944 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Washington University in Saint Louis.  The following year she received a Masters from Radcliffe Women's College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

After college Phyllis Stewart went to work for the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, D.C. and she campaigned for Claude Blackwell who was elected to Congress from Saint Louis in the Republican sweep of 1946.  Congressman Blackwell would lose his seat to the Democrat whom he had defeated two years later.  She would herself run for congress in 1970 but, lost to the incumbent Democrat. 

In 1949 she married John Fred Schlafly Jr. a Saint Louis attorney who came from a wealthy family in the city.  They were both strong Roman Catholics that saw the fight against Communism as a holy crusade.  In their 44 year marriage, he died in 1993, they had six children.

In 1964 she penned her first book A Choice Not An Echo in which she made her case for the nomination and election of Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. 

In 1972 Mrs. Schlafly founded Eagle Forum to fight the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in which ratification was well underway. 28 states having already ratified the ERA.  Ten more states were needed and the ERA would have been a new amendment to the Constitution.  The Equal Right Amendment (ERA) would bar any distinctions in law between men and women.  Originally, it enjoyed wide bi-partisan support.  It was Mrs. Schlafly's Eagle Forum that argued women could lose their advantages in court proceedings such as in child custody cases and that the ERA would mandate women register for the draft.  The deadline for ratification was 1982.  Due to Eagle Forum's efforts several states that had ratified the ERA un-ratified it making it impossible to reach the deadline for ratification in 1982.

While the Moral Majority appealed to conservative Protestants, Eagle Forum appealed to a broader constituency from Roman Catholics to Mormons as well as Protestants.  

In 1978 Mrs. Schlafly received her law degree from Washington University. 

In 2016 Mrs. Schlafly, then 92, endorsed Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.  This caused a revolt among the board at Eagle Forum and she was ousted as head of the group she founded and lead for 44 years.  She died at her home in September of that year.  Candidate Donald Trump attended her funeral Mass.

Eagle Forum, like Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, were grass roots organizations that focused on social issues and national defense.  Both organizations were opposed to abortion and feminism as well as the gay movement.  Both groups saw these social changes as a threat to western Christian civilization.  

Her contribution to the Pro-Life cause was similar to that of Rev. Jerry Falwell in that both were culture warriors fighting on a variety of fronts including the Right to Life of the unborn.  It was their combined efforts along with their supporters throughout the nation that captured (in the words of pro-abortion advocates) the Republican party making it a Pro-Life party.

                    

                                                 President Ronald Wilson Reagan 

 "I've noticed that everyone who supports abortion has already been born."

 - Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989.  His election in 1980 was the culmination of work by social conservatives who seized the Republican party and changed it from being a party of the well-to-do, of which in all honesty Ronald Reagan was a member, to the party of middle class conservative Americans.  As President Mr. Reagan's contribution to the Right to Life movement was limited.  He did appoint Justice William Rehnquist, the dissenter in the 1973 Roe. v. Wade decision as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1986 and he appointed Antonin Scalia to the high court that same year.  He also instituted in 1985 what is known as The Mexico City Policy (named for Mexico City after a United Nations Conference held there on population) which had been the policy of the federal government not to fund abortion related activities regarding foreign aid packages.    

Symbolically, his presidency was enormous.  He was the first openly Pro-Life president of the United States.  He was also the first occupant of the Oval Office to call in to the March for Life rally held on the National Mall.  He did not shy away from proclaiming the humanity of the unborn.  He once said, "I've noticed that everyone who supports abortion has already been born."  Because of his stance every Republican president who followed him would follow his Pro-Life position and in the long term that would prove decisive.   President Reagan died in California, the state he once served as governor, in June of 2004.  He was 93.

                                                               

                                                            Dr. Alveda King

Dr. Alveda King was born in 1951 in a segregated Atlanta, Georgia. Her uncle was the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Her father was a younger brother of Dr. King.  According to Alveda, her mother wanted an abortion, but her mother's father convinced her not to have an abortion allowing Alveda to come into this world.  Alveda's early life would not be without pain.  In 1963 the family was living in Alabama and her father had taken a leadership position in the civil rights movement.  For his association the family home was bombed.  1969 when she was 18 her father drowned in the family swimming pool under suspicious circumstances.  

She went on to receive a Masters in business management from Central Michigan University and an Honorary Doctorate from Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.  Her actual doctorate comes from Aidan University in Jacksonville, Florida,  a degree in applied theology. 

In 1978 she was elected as a Democrat to represent part of Fulton, County in the Georgia state house.  She served in that position through 1982.  She would run for congress in 1984, but ran afoul of the black political establishment and was unsuccessful in her bid.  That same year she supported Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign.  

In the years to follow Dr. Alveda King had a change of heart becoming a Republican and in 2012 supporting fellow Georgian Herman Cain in his bid for the White House.  In 2016 she supported Donald Trump.

She claims to have had two abortions before her own religious conversion in 1983.  She has described abortion as "womb lynching" and accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting from "aborted black babies."  Interesting to note, Planned Parenthood clinics always appear in the poorest of American communities and always in black communities.  Today she is director of Civil Rights for the Unborn and the African American outreach for the Catholic group Priests for Life.   In 1996 she even dared to criticize her aunt Coretta Scott King for her support of abortion.  

Alveda King's life is a testimony for civil rights for minorities and the Right to Life of the unborn.

                                    

                                      Norma McCorvey in a Pro-Life television commercial

In part one of my essay I mentioned that Dr. Bernard Nathanson was an important defector from the pro-abortion to Pro-Life cause.  And then added that he was not the most important defector.  She would be revealed in part two of this series.  Norma McCorvey, known to the nation as Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade was the plaintiff in the 1969 Texas case against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade.  It should be noted for the record that Henry Wade was a registered Democrat and was defending the Texas law prohibiting abortion in the state.  Norma became pregnant with her third child and wanted an abortion.  Abortion advocate attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee seized on McCorvey's situation to advance the abortion cause.  This case could be litigated all the way to the United States Supreme Court in 1972 and the decision would be released on January 22, 1973.

She was born Norma Leah Nelson in September 1947 in Louisiana to a dysfunctional family.  Her father left when she was 13.  Her mother was a violent alcoholic. When she was just ten years old she robbed a cash register at a gas station and ran away from home winding up in Oklahoma City with another girl before she was returned home.  She was declared a ward of the state and sent to at least two reform schools.  She later had to live with a cousin who she alleges raped her.  She met and married her husband Woody McCorvey in 1963 when she was 16.  The couple eventually divorced.  Like her mother Norma had a substance abuse problem with drinking including drugs.  When Norma was pregnant with her third child, the one she wanted to abort, she wound up giving birth to her daughter because she could not legally obtain an abortion in Texas. Her situation was the subject of her case against the Dallas County District Attorney.  Her third child was given up by McCorvey for adoption.  Years later her daughter would reveal that she felt betrayed by her mother for not wanting her.

Norma McCorvey would publish her autobiography in 1994 titled I am Roe.  She would meet a pastor Flip Benham who was the national director of Operation Rescue that was founded by Randall Terry.  Norma apparently had a change of heart and decided to be baptized by this pastor in 1995.  From that point on Norma McCorvey would publically regret her support of abortion.  In 1998 she was baptized into the Catholic Church.  One of the participants at her baptism was Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life.  Father Pavone was recently removed by the Vatican for remarks he made to an abortion supporter.

Norma would participate in Pro-Life media ads as the Jane Roe in the 1973 Roe. v. Wade decision.  She would publically renounce her support for abortion.  Close to death in 2017 she allegedly made a death bed confession that she hadn't cared one way or another about abortion she merely wanted financial support from what ever side was willing to provide it.

Norma McCorvey life was that of a sketchy character.  Was she telling the truth at the end?  It doesn't matter for us, but it does matter for Norma's soul.  When the poster lady for abortion publically jumped off the abortion poster that proved a moral victory for the Right to Life movement.

Norma McCorvey died of kidney failure in Texas in February 2017.  She was 69.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Donald J. Trump the 45th President of the United States  

On October 12, 2016 Holy Family Cathedral had their Wednesdays at the Cathedral night.  This was a weekly event at the cathedral which is the seat of the Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma.  The choice of Wednesday evening was probably a copy of Protestant churches that meet on Wednesday nights.  Tulsa being the buckle of the Bible Belt.  

This particular evening we met at The Garden of Peace which is a lot owned by the Diocese  used by Pro-Life protestors because it was located directly across the street from Reproductive Services the abortion clinic in Tulsa.  Several days prior The Washington Post revealed audio from Donald Trump from several years earlier bantering with Access Hollywood television show host Billy Bush about how he [Donald Trump] would grab women by their privates.  At this point Donald Trump's presidential bid seemed over.  Hillary Clinton was almost assured victory just three weeks away and the Right to Life movement was as far from repealing Roe as Nellie Gray was when she organized the first March for Life in her Washington townhouse in the autumn of 1973. 

But then a miracle happened.  She didn't win.  Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey revealed on Halloween that he needed to investigate documents she had as Secretary of State which had been found on the laptop computer of her aide Huma Abedin's estranged husband former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner.  Mr. Weiner was under investigation at the time for sending sexual materials to a minor. This proved very bad for Hillary whom voters already distrusted. 

Donald Trump used to say, "Politicians are all talk and no action."  As president he kept his promise to Pro-Life voters and appointed three judges to the Supreme Court.  He accepted the recommendations provided him from the Washington based Federalist Society for posts on the federal bench.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also deserves credit as he would not allow the filibuster rule in the senate when it came to presidential appointments to the judicial bench.  The filibuster is a senate rule that allows one or more senators to talk for days on end suspending senate business and requiring 60 senators to cut off debate.  He also would not allow Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to proceed in 2016 upon the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. 

As president Donald Trump appointed Neil M. Gorsuch of Colorado in 2017 to succeed Antonin Scalia.  Brett M. Kavanaugh of Washington D.C. in 2018 to replace Anthony Kennedy and  Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana in 2020 to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg who had recently died.  By 2021 the case of Thomas E. Dobbs (the Mississippi State Health Director) v. Jackson [Mississippi] Women's Health Organization came before the Supreme Court.  In June of 2022 the high court announced in a 6 to 3 ruling that Roe v. Wade and the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which I have not addressed in this article, were null and void!

Today, Reproductive Services in Tulsa is closed due to Oklahoma state law.  Of course with the repeal of Roe the decision to allow or prohibit abortion is a matter taken up by the states.

The work of the Right to Life movement goes on but the tide has moved to their favor.

The People Who Ended Roe Part 1

This is a two part series on the people who overturned Roe v. Wade. Today, January 22^nd would be the 50^th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the Texas case that made it to the United States Supreme Court mandating abortion on demand.  Today the abortion lobby would be holding celebrations from Hollywood to Washington, D.C. thanking their dark lord Lucifer for 50 years of child sacrifice on demand.   But for them, due to the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Organization, it was not to be.  This essay about the people who came from everyday walks of life and stepped out of the safety of anonymity to take a stand against the evil of our time.  This essay is about the leaders of the Right to Life movement.   And while it is about their leadership that is highlighted all their efforts would be for not had it not been for the thousands of Right to Life activists across America.  From the people who run the crisis pregnancy centers to the donors who make the movement possible, to the side walk counselors and participants in the annual March for Life.  This article is about you as much as it is about the people mentioned in this two part series. 

Nellie Gray addressing the march she founded

Nellie Gray began what we know as The Right to Life (Pro-Life) movement with the March for Life. She was born in west Texas in 1924. During World War II Nellie Gray joined the military at age 20 serving in the Woman's Army Corps. After the war she went on to pursue her education at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.  And after graduating from Georgetown she became a civil servant in the federal government for nearly three decades.  A convert to Catholicism Ms. Gray was appalled by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which originated from her home state of Texas. Ms. Gray decided to organize a Right to Life March for the following year and leave behind her government career.  From 1974 to 2022 people in the millions descended on Washington D.C. around January 22 to hold a rally in the National Mall and then march up Constitution Avenue and over to the Supreme Court building. The rally started by Ms. Gray became the annual event for the Right to Life movement and an opportunity for activists to stay focused on one day overturning the Roe decision no matter how long it would take. Ms. Gray would not live to see that day, at least in this life.  She died in 2012 at the age of 88.

Joe Scheidler in front of the U.S. Supreme Court

Another crusader whose life was changed by the infamous Supreme Court decision was Joseph M. Scheidler who left behind his career in public relations after the Roe decision to devote himself full time to the Right to Life movement.  It was Joe Scheidler who began in the Chicagoe area what is known today as Sidewalk Counseling.  In Sidewalk Counseling Mr. Sheidler would approach women going into an abortion clinic in an attempt to talk them out of their decision. If the women was joined by a man he would call the man “Dad” as in “Hey Dad.”  He would then would show pictures of babies in the womb at three months, six months, etc. Mr. Scheidler's methods found himself at odds with more established Pro-Life organizations who did not like his direct tactics.  He went his own way in the movement when he founded the Pro-Life Action League in 1980.  

Mr. Scheidler and his Pro-Life Action League had to endure years of litigation brought on by the National Organization of Women (NOW) for his work as a side walk counselor and Pro-Life activist beginning in 1986 and lasting until 2014.  After a number of court defeats NOWs reluctance to give up the legal harassment of Mr. Scheidler forced them to pay the final court costs of his Pro-Life Action League in 2014.

He wrote books on how to close abortion clinics, instructional videos on how to side walk counsel women.  In 2021 Mr. Sheidler died at age 93, one year before the Dobbs decision overturning Roe.

                                                Randall Terry at a press conference on C-Span

Joe Sheidler created side walk counseling as a way to save the unborn.  Randall Terry took the Pro-Life movement from the sidewalk to the front door of the abortion clinic and crossed a line many in the movement were unwilling to follow. His Operation Rescue took the Pro-Life movement into civil disobedience which proved to be a turning point in the fight against abortion.

Beginning in the mid-1980s Mr. Terry's Operation Rescue began staging sit-ins in front of abortion clinics across the nation.  These acts of civil disobedience not only lead to Mr. Terry's arrest as well as the arrest of his supporters, they aslo gained a great deal of press.   Before Operation Rescue the abortion issue would be talked about at election time, perhaps mentioned by the press every January 22 as the anniversary of Roe v. Wade along with the March for Life.   Abortion had become a part of American society because it out of sight and out of mind.  Mass arrests in front of abortion clinics would change that.

Not everyone on the side of Life was in agreement.  Reverend Charles Stanley of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta was a critic of Operation Rescue's tactics stating that he was unwilling to break the law in defense of the unborn.  Randall Terrys rebuttal to that was if everyone thought like Rev. Stanley everyone would be Catholic and America would be British.  In later years Terry would himself join the Catholic Church.  Randall Terry's work on behalf of the unborn even came home with him in that he and his wife adopted several kids whose mothers had planned on having an abortion.  Mr. Terry would leave Operation Rescue to pursue other endeavors for the Right to Life and the broader culture war. In 2012 he ran as a Democrat for president to challenge that party's stance on abortion.  He won several counties in Oklahoma over incumbent President Obama in the primary.

   Rev. Falwell at a rally in the 1980s

Reverend Jerry Falwell was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1933. He came from a non-religious, dysfunctional home.   He got religion in his teens when he met his future wife. They had three children. One went on to lead Thomas Road Baptist Church and another Liberty University both founded by Falwell.  

Like most of his fellow religious politics was not something of interest to Rev. Falwell. Politics was worldly stuff the people of God should avoid.   The cultural changes of the 1960s that included the sexual revolution brought about by the birth control pill and the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, along with the violent protests against the war in Vietnam were alarming to conservative Christians. The 1976 election of evangelical Christian Jimmy Carter was comforting to many evangelical Protestants. But in time many would turn against the man they considered one of their own.  Jerry Falwell founded The Moral Majority which became the largest political organizations of evangelical Christians in the nation.  In 1980 it would deliver two thirds of white evangelical voters to President Carter's Republican challenger former California Governor Ronald Reagan. The Moral Majority was an important faction in the Reagan coalition of the 1980s.  It was essential to brining Protestants into the cultural war on behalf of the Right to Life and it inspired other groups that would follow such as The Christian Coalition.   Reverend Falwell died in 2007 of a heart attack.   He was 73.

                                                Dr. Nathanson in his video The Silent Scream.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson was a prominent defector from the abortion movement, but not the most prominent defector.  She appears in part two of this essay.  Dr. Nathanson's career would be like that of Saul of Tarsus and we know the rest of that story.   Born in New York City in 1926 his father was an obstetrician/gynecologist.  This was the career he would pursue as an adult.  He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University at later received his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1949.  He became a licensed medical doctor in New York state in 1952.  In 1960 he was a board certified obstetrician/gynecologist.  Dr. Nathanson was a pioneer for "abortion rights" becoming a founding member of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health or "CRASH."   He had performed many abortions in his career including one on a woman he himself had impregnated.  Dr. Nathanson was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws which became the current National Abortion Rights Action League or NARAL Pro-Choice America.  His and their intention was to legalize abortion.  

This brings me to a series I enjoyed as a young man back in the 1980s called Connections hosted by James Burke.  The ten part series, from the British Broadcasting Company or BBC, was about how technology changed the world.  And while the Connections series did not cover the invention of the ultrasound, this device used to view an unborn child in its mother's womb, this technology did change the heart of Dr. Bernard Nathanson.  It was due to an ultrasound that Dr. Nathanson would see an abortion in real time.  In it he could see the unborn baby open its mouth in pain as the surgical abortion took its life.  This was the reason he called his 1984 video The Silent Scream.  The opening of the video is an introduction from Oscar winning actor Charlton Heston who talked about open heart surgery how those surgeries take place on a regular basis without controversy.  Mr. Heston goes on to explain that what the viewer is about to see is not without controversy because the viewer is about to see the taking of an innocent human life.  For the record, Charlton Heston's introduction was magnificent, but then again that man could read out of an instruction manual and it would have the same effect.  

Dr. Nathanson would write his autobiography in 1996 titled Hand of God in which he wrote about his involvement in the legalization of abortion and how he came to regret what he had done.  While he was raised as a Jew he had become an atheist even after his change of heart on abortion.  This proves that you don't need a God, a church, or dogma to know that killing an innocent life is wrong.  Eventually Dr. Nathanson would become a Roman Catholic in December of 1996.  He was baptized by John Cardinal O'Connor of New York City.  A acquaintance of mine attended his baptism.   He died in 2011 at the age of 84.