THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 15, 1995 TAG: 9508150002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
Norma McCorvey, the woman who as 21-year-old ``Jane Roe'' was the plaintiff in the landmark case legalizing abortion, has changed her mind. That's her right, and it's the right of abortion opponents to persuade her not only to their cause but to employment in their filing room in Dallas instead of in a women's clinic there.
But what we've heard so far - that Ms. McCorvey still supports first-trimester abortions - puts her more in the mainstream of national thought on abortion than in the belligerently anti-abortion camp of Operation Rescue.
Few Americans haven't wished over the past 20 years that legal abortion weren't necessary. Except for the extremists on either side, it's a difficult issue. Most of us prefer to leave the debate to the causists and the decision to individuals. As medical advances improve the chances of survival of a second- or third-trimester fetus outside the womb, Americans are increasingly bothered by late-pregnancy abor-tions. But there are very few of them, and they are more often the result of a medical recommendation and thus properly the decision of a woman and her physician, or of incredible ignorance, not of indecision or whim.
Yet the campaign continues, with Operation Rescue in the lead, to deny women the right of abortion by denying access to it. Ms. McCorvey says she won't participate in the demonstrations that change only the blood pressure of ordinary Americans disgusted at the politicization of so personal a dilemma. ``I've already been exploited enough,'' she said, ``to last a lifetime.''
The issue has been exploited more than enough, too. Wherever Ms. McCorvey works, the Roe decision stands. The issue now should be not how to deprive women of the right to abortion, but how to prevent the need. by CNB