Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of the landmark “Roe vs. Wade” descision of 1973 that legalized abortion throught the United States spoke at Cornell this evening. On August 8, 1995 Norma McCorvey accepted Jesus into her life as her personal saviour, and has been a strong supporter of life ever since. She now works as a counselor, goes on speaking engagments, and has worked to overturn Roe vs. Wade. She many times mentioned that if you are considering getting an abortion, or need post-abortion counseling, you should give her a call.

Norma McCorvey shared her testimony, and then answered several questions from the audience–questions that were written on index cards and read by one of the members of the Cornell Coalition for Life (the sponsoring student organization).

The story of how abortion was legalized in America began on a Sunday morning in a Jehovah witness church service. Norma’s Dad was preaching that if you smoke or drink alchohol you will die and burn in hell. Then he asked if anyone had any questions. Norma spoke up. “If smoking and drinking will cause one to burn in hell” she said, “then what are those cigarette’s in your pocket there? And what are those brown bottles that you and mother drink from?” Norma’s father was very angry with her, and sent her outside to wait in the car. Norma did not wait in the car. She ran away.

After she left home, Norma went to live with one of her girlfriend’s, taking drugs, smoking, and drinking as much alchohol as they could. Norma lived a very sinful lifestyle, for many, many years. One day Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee approached her and asked her to sign an affidavit to challenge the Texas law on abortion. That was the only thing that she did. She never went to any of the court hearings, and then one day, as she was picked up the newspaper, she found out that her case had reached the Supreme Court, and had made abortion legal throughout the United States.

After this, Norma worked in several abortion clinics. Her job was to get people to come, and thus to fill their clinics weekly quota. (They had to make about $40,000 in abortions a week.) She described the pre-abortion counseling given in all of them as nothing more then the Doctor asking the patient to sign the neccesary legal paper.

One day, Operation Rescue came to the abortion clinic where she worked. She did not know what to do, first she thought she should call the police, then she thought she should call the press — in the end she called both. Operation Rescue arrived with all their large posters of aborted babies, the Press was there, and the police were there. The posters were too much for her — and she quickly tried to have them removed. Finally she made an agreement with Operation Rescue that they could talk for three minutes with each patient if they would take the signs away — she said that just these three minutes made the amount of abortion’s they did drop by about 65%.

In 1995 Norma accepted Jesus as her personal saviour. She was very sad about her history, but told us that she has been forgiven, and “her sins are as far away now as the east is from the west”. Now Norma has started Roe no More Ministries, she gives woman pre- and post- abortion counseling. She also travels around the country, sharing her testimony.

This event was co-sponsored by Community Development, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Cornell Political Coalition, the Bioethics Society of Cornell, the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the Office of the Vice President for Student and Academic Services, Cornell College Republicans, Cornell Catholic Community, Cornell Advocates for the Family, Catholic Circle, and the Office of the Vice President for University Communications.

Update: The Cornell Daily Sun also has a great report on this.