“‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord’.” (Leviticus 18:21)
This week (and fifty million abortions later) marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe V. Wade.
You’ve probably never heard of Norma McCorvey, but you know who she is.
Norma McCorvey was America’s poster child for abortion. In fact, even though you may have never heard her name, you’ve most likely have heard about the landmark Supreme Court Case, Roe v. Wade. Interestingly, while it was Norma McCorvey who became the Jane Roe in a Texas case that challenged that state’s right to prohibit abortions, she never had abortion, before or since.
McCorvey had no idea that she would become a national icon for abortion rights. The truth is the real Jane Roe was an embarrassment to those who were looking for a better pedigree to tout their cause. McCorvey, in her book, Roe v. McCorvey, said it this way: “I could out-cuss the most crass of men and women; I could out-drink many of the Dallas taverns’ regulars; and I was known for my hot temper. When pro-lifers called me a murderer, I called them worse. When people held up signs of fetuses, I spit in their face.”
McCorvey once told a reporter that abortion was her life. “This issue is the only thing I live for. I live, eat, breathe, think everything about abortion.”
But God had plans for Norma McCorvey, plans that would allow McCorvey to put her zeal for abortion to work for the Lord. It all began when the pro-life group, Operation Rescue, located right next door to McCorvey’s abortion clinic. Flip Benham, the brash and bold leader of Operation Rescue, often engaged in friendly banter with Norma, an after effect of the occasional clashes that sharing almost common quarters seemed to invite. “What you need to do is go to a good Beach Boys concert,” Norma once quipped. “Miss Norma,” Benham answered, “I haven’t been to a Beach Boys concert since 1976.”
“The seemingly innocuous response shook me to the core,” remembers McCorvey. “All at once, Flip became human. Before, I had thought of Flip as a man who did nothing but yell at abortion clinics and read his Bible. The thought that he was a real person—a guy who had once even gone to a Beach Boys concert—never occurred to me. Now that it had, I saw him in a new light.”
“I continued teasing,” she said. “Come on, Flip, I didn’t know you were ever a sinner.” “Miss Norma,” he replied, “I’m a great big sinner saved by a great big God.”
Ultimately, McCorvey reveals that it was a seven year-old little girl, the almost victim of an abortion, that won McCorvey’s heart to the Lord.
The Lord also used that seven year-old little girl to convince McCorvey to pursue her life-long interest in abortion – in a different way. “Abortion was no longer an abstract right,” McCorvey boldly declared. “It had a face now, in a little girl named Emily.”
Listen to what McCorvey said about abortion after her conversion: “I felt crushed…Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It wasn’t about ‘missed periods’. It was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion—at any point—was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”
Anyone who is genuinely saved can remember the day the blinders came off; and we, too, can attest to the change God can make in sinners like Norma McCorvey because He made the same change in us.
McCorvey speaks nationwide now about the change Jesus has made in her life. She even has her own website, http://www.leaderu.com/norma/. “I’m one hundred percent sold out to Jesus and one hundred percent pro-life,” she likes to say. “No exceptions. No compromise.”
The Bible says it this way: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
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