A Republican president announces a nomination to the Supreme Court. An instantaneous weeping and gnashing of teeth echoes across the land. Doom! Gloom! Roe v. Wade faces imminent extinction! (Funny, how they’re more concerned about the extinction of a court decision than of innocent life, but there you go.) Liberal activists hold press conferences declaring the nominee the second coming of Satan, who threatens not only “women’s rights,” but womanhood itself. (So does someone being able to just declare himself a woman willy-nilly, but there you go.)

The press gathers to hear the activist and her proclamations, usually with some wounded-looking woman at her side. We learn the pending doom of women just like this one if the (mostly-male) Senate gives the black robed demon a seat on our highest court.

We’ve heard it all week with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. And it filled me with a strong sense of deja vu.

In Gloria Allred’s Office

It’s Summer 1991. Bryan Adams is topping the charts. Clarence Thomas has just been nominated. I was working for the Voice of America’s West Coast bureau. The assignment, a sleepy one: Attend a press conference by attorney Gloria Allred condemning Thomas’ nomination.

The shindig was held in Allred’s Los Angeles offices. The press packed her conference room. The feminist firebrand strode into the room a few minutes before the press conference began, checking on preparations. The jester in me was tempted to say, “Hon, can you fetch me some coffee?” But I behaved myself. (I was very liberal at the time, didn’t have a dog in the fight, and was just giddy about being out of the office.) 

The press conference soon began. Allred launched into the familiar refrain. Thomas’ nomination meant doom to women the world over. It’s a song she already knew well. In fact, she had sung it just one year earlier after the nomination of David Souter. (Yes, that David Souter.)

Our Tale Takes a Hopeful Turn

But here is where our tale takes a Hollywood twist. Here is where hope enters the story.

Above I spoke about how at these pro-abortion press conferences and rallies the leader always has some sympathetic woman at her side. That day in L.A. was no exception.

Sitting next to Allred that day, as she had been the year before during the Souter confirmation, was one Norma McCorvey. None other than the Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade. From a prepared text, the plain, diminutive McCorvey methodically — I’d almost say robotically — declared Clarence Thomas a dire risk to Roe v. Wade.

“If abortion is so right, why were the women crying?”

McCorvey was a fixture on the pro-abortion scene. The poster lady for the abortion industry, once she came forward in the 1980s. And here she was again in the Summer of ’91.

Yet unknown to the reporters in the room, McCorvey was a tortured soul, with “conflicting emotions.” Those conflicts would begin playing out mere months later. Here’s what she would tell a Senate hearing.

Then around 1992, I began to work in abortion clinics. Like most Americans … I had no actual experience with abortion until that point. (Note: McCorvey never did have the abortion that was the basis for the Roe v. Wade case.) When I began to work in the abortion clinics, I became even more emotionally confused and conflicted between what my conscience knew to be evil, and what the judges, my mind and my need for money were telling me was OK. I saw women crying in the recovery rooms. If abortion is so right, why were the women crying?

Her conscience bothered her “more and more.” In 1995, a pro-life organization moved next door to the Dallas abortion clinic where she worked. “I acted hatefully towards those people,” she said. (Sound familiar?) “Those people,” namely Pastor Flip Benham and other members of Operation Rescue Dallas, responded with love.

In the summer of 1995, McCorvey gave her life to Christ. She would spend the rest of her earthly days fighting passionately for the cause of life.

“The answer to the abortion problem,” she said, “is forgiveness, repentance, and love.”

Our Chance to Fill in the Blank

As many Stream writers have noted, the pro-abortion advocates were set to protest any judge President Trump named to the Supreme Court. Statements were written up, signs printed up, just waiting for the name to fill in the blank. Woman’s March even sent out a press release after the announcement where they didn’t even bother to fill in the name. Just had “XX” where a name was supposed to go.

We need our own “fill in the blank.” The blank that’s currently in the Book of Life. The blank that’s currently in the list of those supporting life. The Norma McCorvey story needs to make us look at the protesters, leaders, abortion activists. Look closely at their each face, and pray, “Lord, let this one be the one who finds you. Who finds life. Who comes to celebrate life.”

Let Norma McCorvey stand as an example. The woman who went from being the name behind Roe v. Wade to celebrating the Name Above All Names.

Al Perrotta is Managing Editor of The Stream, and co-author of the new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him on Twitter @StreamingAl.