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Contents © 1996
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

June 1996

"McCorvey is not the only prominent pro-choice supporter and activist to defect. There is also Mary Doe, whose real name is Sandra Bensing Cano. Although practically no one remembers her, Bensing Cano was the plaintiff in Doe v. Bolton, the companion suit to Roe that the Supreme Court decided in 1973 -- on the same day as Roe, in fact. Like McCorvey, Bensing Cano was 22 years old, poor, and pregnant when she signed on as Doe. But in 1988, she denounced her pseudonym and joined OR.

"Bensing Cano's defection was largely ignored then, and today even fewer people know about Kirsten Breedlove. She is a former Dallas abortion clinic administrator who was lionized by the religious right last year after the clinic closed and she went to work for OR. And there is the young woman, a medical assistant, who used to work at the same clinic McCorvey did. She, too, has quit and now volunteers with an OR-affiliated 'crisis pregnancy center.'"

The Village Voice writer explained how McCorvey was recruited by feminist lawyer Sarah Weddington in 1969. "McCorvey signed on as Jane Roe, and to make her case stronger, she lied that her pregnancy was the result of a rape. Months later she was crushed when Weddington offhandedly mentioned that the suit would continue for years. McCorvey had the baby, a girl, and relinquished her for adoption. She felt devastated, betrayed, and furious with Weddington. A few months after the birth, she tried to kill herself...

"As long as 15 years ago, McCorvey was worried by the thought that, as Jane Roe, she was responsible for the deaths of millions of babies. Her anxieties took the form of a story she confided to a few people, about walking past a neighborhood playground noticing it was devoid of kids and wondering if the emptiness was due to legal abortion..."

The Voice article proceeds to interview a Dallas abortion-clinic director who tried to counter feelings like McCovrey's even among her staff: "'I told staff to imagine that the media comes and sticks a camera in your face and asks, "How do you respond to the prolife bumper sticker 'Abortion Stops a Beating Heart?' Everyone sputtered and said, 'The fetus isn't alive.' But when I asked how they felt the first time they saw the bumper sticker, they felt free to say, 'Yeah, it's true.' Then they had the chance to work through the moral and ethical questions surrounding the killing of that life'....

"'Norma is happy now,' Gonzales says. 'She sleeps at night, and she no longer worries about what to say or how to say it.' 'I'm a weak and frail person,' McCorvey adds. 'Now I don't have to act strong anymore.'

[The Voice author]: "I could see what she meant at the rally where Alan Keyes told women to sacrifice for their country. Following that call, Flip Benham [Operation Rescue leader who baptized McCorvey last summer] introduced McCorvey. In a way, she looked far more comfortable than she ever had at pro-choice events. Her bargain clothes matched those of most of the audience...." McCorvey came to the microphone and read a poem she had composed: "'If you like, Lord, use my body to make your precious children whole again.'"


LARGE FAMILIES. Counter-cultural view expressed in the May Homiletic & Pastoral Review by Father Caesar Santos, Opus Dei priest in Manila: "I have heard many parents of large families say that it is in fact easier to raise many children than few. This is not surprising, for when a couple have only one or two children, any small problem of the child becomes a big source of anxiety. The father and mother are constantly concerned about whether the child has everything he needs. They become very worried over the smallest difficulty or slightest complaint their child may have.

"Parents of large families, on the other hand, find it easier to be more objective. They learn much from the upbringing of the older children, and this experience greatly facilitates the upbringing of the younger ones."


MATTHEW FOX UPDATE in Berkeley's East Bay Express appeared on April 26. Though expelled from the Dominicans in 1993, "Fox bounced back quickly, becoming an Episcopalian priest in December 1994. The first item on Fox's post-Catholic agenda was to expand the use of 'rave' in Christian liturgy. Fox had planned to invite members of a Sheffield, England, rave community to Oakland to help form a ritual center. But the plan collapsed after the community's leader was exposed in the British press for sexually abusing women in the community.

"[Fox up to this time had maintained his Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality at Oakland's Holy Names College.] The incident spooked administrators at Holy Names. When they sought to place tighter controls on ICCS, Fox announced he would be leaving at the end of the school year to start the University of Creation Spirituality.... Not to be ignored, Holy Names, which derived a healthy revenue from ICCS, is scrambling to cobble together its own spirituality program, named 'Sophia Center'.... Sophia Center plans fall courses with internationally known feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, Buddhist ecologist Joanna Macy, and Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions; UCS, meanwhile, has recruited ex-California governor Jerry Brown; Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with Wolves; and physicist Rupert Sheldrake. And, of course, Fox himself."

The Express article goes on to tell of resignations of Fox's lieutenants: Cliff Atkinson, editor of Creation Spirituality Magazine, and Todd Norwood, director of the foundation funding Fox, as well as a falling out with another close follower, Fr. John Mabry. Mabry settled the dispute but told the Express, "'We're all terrified of being ostracized by our community for criticizing the guru. The guru thing plays real heavy here.'"


"EVERYONE KNOWS, because it is big news everywhere," says an editorial in the May 9 Wall Street Journal, "that Governors Whitman, Pataki, Wilson, and Weld have called for the G.O.P. convention to jettison the platform plank on an abortion amendment. But somehow it was reported only in last Friday's New York Post that Democratic Senator Pat Moynihan, surely one of the party's most respected statesmen, announced he'd vote to override President Clinton's veto of the bill banning partial-birth abortions. 'I think it is just too close to infanticide,' the New York Senator said.... Our computerized search turns up no reporting on the Moynihan statement beyond the New York tabloid. Not quite up there with Bill Weld's beliefs, we guess, so unfit to print."


PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTIONS never needed, says ob-gyn James Jones in the May 2 Catholic New York. "In cases of special difficulty, obstetricians can always resort to Caesarean delivery, he said." Reviewing cases of the five women President Clinton brought in who had undergone late-term abortions, "the first speaker said her baby had hydrocephalus -- excess fluid in the brain area that causes an enlarged head. Dr. Jones said this was a difficulty he has handled by inserting a small needle and slowly drawing off fluid until the head was small enough for delivery."


IN A LETTER TO THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, a 26-year-old tries to explain what's happening to Generation X Catholic voters: "In 1992, I pulled the lever for Clinton for the same reason NCR would like me to do it again: except for abortion, the Democratic platform came the closest to Catholic social teaching. So I knew I would disagree with White House policy on that issue, but I didn't think I would disagree this much! Inserting abortion into a health care reform plan that I otherwise believed in and the attempt to internationalize Roe v. Wade at the [U.N. fourth World Confrence on Women] was, for me, over the top. The current administration has turned me into what I've always opposed: a single-issue voter. But what else can I do when the Democrats not only support abortion, but support it this much? NCR's answer is to ignore it. Sorry, but I don't make the same mistake twice."


EDITOR'S NOTE introducing an interview in Orange County's Diocese of Orange Bulletin (May 1996) of Westminster family physician Dr. Richard Wetzel, 37: "When he began practicing medicine 10 years ago, he had left the Catholic Church in which he had been reared because he disputed Church teaching, particularly sexual morality (birth control, homosexuality, premarital sex). During his years of practice, he came to believe his earlier views were wrong, going so far as to refuse to prescribe artificial birth control to his patients beginning in 1989. He returned to the Church and has become an outspoken advocate of Church teaching on sexual morality. Today, he, his wife Dominique, and their four children are parishioners at St. Mary's by the Sea in Huntington Beach."

Excerpt from the interview: "I came to believe that the most important misconception society has about sexuality is the idea that people -- especially men -- have specific genital sexual needs. According to this myth, people need to have sex with a certain frequency or in a certain manner or the need to fulfill a particular fantasy. It further helped my understanding when I read some material from the Holy Father discussing the great freedom people experience when they understand genuine love. 'Needs' turn the individual into himself, which imprisons him. The 'needs' misconception lies at the heart of what I consider addictive attitudes about sex."


JOHN SALVI and the two women he shot at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts were featured on a two-hour special on Canadian TV in January and February. According to an April report from Human Life International, "The 'documentary' portrayed [abortion staffer] Shannon Lowney as a slain heroine brimming with personality, intelligence and promise. She graduated from the Jesuits' Boston College in 1991 with a major in history, magna cum laude. But this raises questions. As a Catholic, educated in Catholic schools, why was she working for PP? Why didn't other Catholics oppose her taking part in the massive 'termination' of preborn babies? Shannon's father spent 10 years as a Holy Cross brother; her mother 10 years as a nun. Describing their upbringing, Shannon's sister, Megan, said, 'In religious matters we had a choice, and we were empowered by choice.' 'Shannon was there [at PP] to serve women,' her mother insisted. 'She respected the choice of women to have an abortion. That is their right.'"


VICTORY ABORTED. From the June American Spectator:

"Just when President Clinton appeared to give Bob Dole a politicial opening on the abortion issue with his veto of a bill banning the partial-birth abortion procedure, Dole may have shot himself in the foot (again). In the wake of some feisty public statements by leading pro-choice Republican governors, the media is predicting disaster for Dole at the Republican National Convention this summer as these moderates slug it out with the pro-life forces in a fight over the party's official position on abortion.

"What hasn't been noticed is that these calls by moderates to change the abortion language in the party platform have actually been solicited by the Dole camp, according to well-placed sources. Dole favors moderating the party's stance going into the general election, perhaps by ending the traditional platform call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. But he knows he can't get out front on the issue without causing a revolt in pro-life ranks. So he's fomented a split instead, to allow himself to step in late in the game as the grand compromiser.

Sources close to New York Governor George Pataki, who was the first Republican governor to declare that he would lead a convention challenge to the anti-abortion plank, say he was prevailed upon by the Dole forces -- including Pataki godfather and Dole campaign co-chairman Sen. Alfonse D'Amato -- to go public with his reservations about the plank. Pataki was told that the Dole campaign had first asked California Gov. Pete Wilson and then New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman to lead the charge, but neither wanted to be the first to jump in the pool. That's when Pataki received his marching orders. Subsequently, both Whitman and Wilson have gotten on board. (Whitman went so far as to endorse Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban, all but taking herself out of contention for veep, at least this year.)

The media spin -- that Dole is facing a politically dangerous insurrection by pro-choice forces -- is exactly how Dole wants it played: to give himself cover when he tells the pro-life forces he's being pushed into compromise. Otherwise, there's no reason why Whitman, just named co-chairman of the San Diego convention, or Wilson, heading Dole's effort in California, would have intentionally sought to undermine Dole.

Cover for Dole was also the motive behind the appointment of staunch pro-life Republican Rep. Henry Hyde to head the GOP platform committee. If he blesses the Dole compromise, the thinking goes, the pro-lifers won't walk. The whole strategy is predicated on legendary deal-maker Doles' ability to hold contending forces together. It's likely to be a fight he wishes he hadn't picked.

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