A Woman’s Right to Change Her Mind : Psychology: Norma McCorvey has been a pivotal figure in the abortion rights movement. Her embrace of Operation Rescue has shocked many, but experts say it is a classic case of a person trying to resolve a deep ambivalence.

She was a ninth-grade dropout thrust at random into the headlights of a divisive social movement--but she was also a powerful symbol. It’s no wonder, analysts say, she flipped over last week from the complex, intellectual ideology of the abortion rights movement to the security of a fundamentalist faith dedicated to “saving babies.” Norma McCorvey, they say, is a classic religious convert, a woman searching for meaning and structure in an ambivalent world.

For many years, McCorvey was the silent, invisible “Jane Roe” plaintiff in the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling. Then, in 1980 she came out as Norma McCorvey, a troubled product of reform schools whose third unwanted pregnancy vaulted her to symbolic status as the woman who legalized abortion in the United States.

Last week, a fascinated national television audience watched as McCorvey, 47, publicly switched sides, saying she had found God and was rededicating her life to “saving babies.” Cameras rolled as a fundamentalist pastor baptized her in a back-yard swimming pool in a Dallas suburb, then again later as she tried to explain in an interview why she is volunteering for Operation Rescue, a fundamentalist protest group that organizes clinic blockades.

Analysts agree that compared to the tectonic ideological shift under way in Congress, McCorvey’s spiritual journey probably has no more practical impact than any other individual with a change of heart. But as a personal story, her switch was greeted with intense curiosity, some praising or pitying her, many trying to understand.

According to Laguna Beach psychologist Ellen McGrath, McCorvey is not the first in a long line of people--from Communists to health addicts--who have made a seemingly puzzling switch from one extreme idea to another.

“What they may be doing is trying to resolve deep ambivalence. The quickest way to try and relieve exhaustion and resolve ambivalence is to embrace the other side. In this case, she’ll find a strongly developed community, a strong community with very clear standards and beliefs that will openly embrace her.

“It’s lonely to be a lightning rod,” McGrath said. “In times of trouble and turbulence, people go to more extremes to find answers that provide safety and structure to resolve the ambivalence.”

In a 1994 autobiography, “I Am Roe: My Life, Roe v. Wade and Freedom of Choice” (HarperCollins), McCorvey revealed that her grandmother was a prostitute-fortuneteller, her mother an alcoholic who divorced her Army private father when Norma was 13. Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, McCorvey ran away when she was 10; she eventually settled in Dallas and dropped out of school when she was 16. What followed were years of alcohol and drug abuse, pay-the-rent jobs as bartender, carnival barker or house cleaner. She suffered from severe depression. She had lovers of both sexes.

McCorvey had not articulated an ideology of her own when she was discovered and used “at random” by abortion rights leaders in the Roe vs. Wade case, said Los Angeles psychologist and attorney Rex Julian Beaber. (Wade was Henry Wade, then the Dallas County district attorney enforcing the Texas abortion laws.) As the plaintiff in the test case, she was ultimately unable to obtain the abortion she sought, and put her daughter up for adoption.

McCorvey came to serve as a symbol for one of the era’s most compelling movements, but no more. “At some level, she had to know she was nothing more than a figurehead. And she had served her purpose,” Beaber said.

On Thursday’s “Nightline” program, McCorvey told interviewer Ted Koppel that the abortion rights leaders were Vassar-educated women who shunned her and thought she was “stupid.” “They never gave me the respect I thought I deserved,” she said.

“I don’t think anyone did not not respect her,” replied Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. “Whether she was satisfied that she had the role she wanted, that’s a different issue. Maybe she was unhappy about not having a more prominent role.”

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Skeptics observed that McCorvey seemed less than committed to her conversion because while she told Koppel that she was against abortion, she also said she still upheld a woman’s right to choose abortion in the first trimester, particularly in cases where the fetus is deformed.

But some religious experts said they believe her conversion is sincere.

Stuart Wright, a sociologist specializing in religion at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tex., said that intellectual understanding almost always lags behind emotional rush in religious conversions.

“It’s a powerful, emotional and psychological shift, and how that plays itself out in belief or doctrine or intellectually, certainly has to come along later. This was not an intellectual conversion,” he said.

Nor was it made without conflict, the analysts said. Beaber suggested McCorvey’s seeming inconsistency is really a “devilish compromise” crafted unconsciously to accommodate her newfound alliance with the evangelists but also to maintain the continuity of her life and her connections with the women’s movement.

“If she were to renounce completely her position on abortion, she would be in effect renouncing her life and making herself the ultimate Benedict Arnold of one of the most compelling social movements of our time,” he said.

On the other hand, some praised McCorvey for finding her way out of what is a continuing moral, emotional and intellectual impasse for many.

Said Charles Figley, a psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee: “She may have felt she had in her hands both the responsibility to talk about a woman’s right to choose, but at the same time to point out it is a very, very difficult choice. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure for anyone to have.

“It took a certain amount of courage to articulate her position,” considering the pressure she was under and knowing she would be criticized, he said. “It’s really a tribute to her tenacity and her ability to survive that she hasn’t succumbed to major difficulties,” Figley said.

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Both abortion rights leaders and abortion foes downplayed the symbolic significance of McCorvey’s reversal. Nevertheless, Wright said, “It’s an incredible coup for the pro-life movement.” That may be one reason Operation Rescue leaders have given McCorvey some room for inconsistency in her newfound beliefs, some say.

According to Wright, Operation Rescue and similar nondenominational groups adhere to a strict biblical literalism and usually expect converts to do the same. “They seem to be willing to push this issue aside for a while, to allow her to make this public statement about her conversion,” he said.

Operation Rescue spokesman Gary McCullough said McCorvey knows her conversion is incomplete and “she knows her friends in Operation Rescue are praying for her to come full circle. She knows it’s expected of her.”

That would mean not only accepting fundamentalist Christianity’s denunciation of abortion but also homosexuality. McCorvey has lived with a lesbian partner, Connie Gonzales, 64, for much of the past 22 years.

Some suggest that if pushed too far, too fast, McCorvey might return to her former beliefs. Wright said that several years ago, Eldridge Cleaver, the author and Black Panther leader, experienced a similar emotional conversion to Christianity.

“He was immediately thrust into fame and recognition in the public eye. He toured and did a lot of speaking engagements.

“The churches, denominational leaders were trying to push him so quickly, perhaps too soon. I think it backfired. He withdrew and fell back into drug use and some other things. He hadn’t processed what that conversion meant to him. They ushered him onto the stage and made him a public figure before he was ready.”

Said McCullough: “We’re not asking her to do anything. We’re not even managing her press appearances. We’re taking messages and passing them on to her.”

But others suggest the temptation to capitalize on her transformation is part and parcel of the politics of great social movements.

Said Beaber: “She may be destined in her life to be a fluctuating symbol. What’s sad about that is that she wanted to escape. She wanted to be more than that.”