Given the speed with which a federal district judge dismissed Norma McCorvey’s bid to overturn Roe v. Wade, it’s clear he didn’t want to examine the mountain of evidence her attorneys put before the court.
Judge David Godbey didn’t so much as make a legal judgment. It’s not that he read the 5,400 pages of evidence presented to him. It’s not that he wasn’t impressed with the 1,000 affidavits offered from women who now regret their abortions. What the judge did was he passed on a hot potato.
That’s all he did. It’s not the end of this case. There’s likely to be a rehearing request or an appeal.
McCorvey is Jane Roe from the famous Roe v. Wade case. Since she was a principal in the case, she filed a motion for relief from judgment and asked the court to reopen the case to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into scientific and other evidence showing abortion actually hurts women.
McCorvey was 21 when she became pregnant out of wedlock. She made up a story about being raped. She worked with two lawyers who wanted to challenge Texas abortion laws.
“Plain and simple, I was used,” she says. “I was a nobody to them. They only needed a pregnant woman to use for their case, and that is it. They cared, not about me, but only about legalizing abortion. Even after the case, I was never respected – probably because I was not an Ivy League-educated, liberal feminist like they were.”
But Godbey dismissed the request within hours of receiving it, saying it wasn’t made within a “reasonable time” after the 1973 judgment. One little problem: There’s nothing in the law that sets such a deadline. In other words, this judge is using the same kind of slippery logic the Supreme Court used to craft the Roe v. Wade ruling – inventing laws where none exist.
“I think the judge has misunderstood the case,” said Allan Parker, one of McCorvey’s attorneys. “This is not a case of newly discovered evidence, which must be brought in a short amount of time. It’s a case of changed factual conditions and law.”
If deadlines were critical to the court, the Roe v. Wade decision itself should never have been made. While the court used the case to strike down abortion restrictions in all 50 states, Norma “Jane Roe” McCorvey had already had her baby by the time the court ruled. It’s funny how deadlines are important sometimes but not important at other times.
The trouble with so many judges and politicians in this country is that they now look on Roe v. Wade, specifically, and Supreme Court rulings, generally, as Holy Writ. They are not. They shouldn’t be. We have one branch of government in this country responsible for making law, and it’s not the court.
It’s time for us as a nation to revert to the rule of law, not the rule of nine high priests in black robes. That’s not the American way.
It’s time for the people to have their say on this important, life-and-death issue again in America, and that can only happen when Roe v. Wade is overturned and discredited.
This is an issue, like all others in American society, which needs to be decided by legislators acting like legislators, not judges playing God.
Good law can never be built on a foundation of lies – and that’s exactly what Roe v. Wade did.
Roe v. Wade has resulted in the slaying of 40 million unborn babies since Roe. Yet, the abortion-at-all-costs crowd speaks of Roe in reverential tones – almost religious tones. They speak of it as a profound human-rights breakthrough. They speak of it as if it is one of the Ten Commandments. No new member of the Supreme Court must be seated if he or she does not subscribe to every tenet of Roe, they say.
The new Roe case asserts three major arguments for reopening and overturning the precedent:
- Roe v. Wade deprived women of protection from dangerous abortions. Attorneys will present affidavits from more than 1,000 women who testify about the devastating emotional effects of abortion.
- Medical and scientific breakthroughs can now answer the question of when life begins, something the 1973 court deemed beyond their abilities.
- Under a 1999 law, Texas provides for any woman’s unwanted child from birth to 18 years of age with no questions asked, which means women should no longer be forced to dispose of unwanted unborn children.
The Norma McCorvey story is a classic redemption story. She is taking a tragic event in her life and using it for good. She should be encouraged. She should be applauded. She should be heard.
