The woman whose pregnancy provoked the Roe v Wade court case that legalised abortion in the United States in 1973 has condemned the decision by Notre Dame University to invite the fiercely pro-abortion Barack Obama to deliver its commencement address on May 17.
Norma McCorvey - the "Jane Roe" of Roe v Wade - is now a Catholic pro-life campaigner. And she has joined 60 Catholic bishops in condemning the university 's decision to honour the most "pro-choice" politician ever to sit in Congress.
"Obama is not the ideal person to speak to a young bunch of kids that are going out into the world for the first time," she told me.
"These people will have to remember that it was him who spoke at their graduation for the rest of ther natural lives. We have many in the pro-life movement that are better qualified to do this.
"I am really surprised more parents haven't pulled their kids out. I have heard that many of them will not show up this reason."
Norma is a brave lady: in the 1980s she revealed herself to be the "Jane Roe" of the famous case, and in the 1990s she converted to Christianity. In 1998 she became a Catholic and now campaigns for civil rights "for everybody, including the unborn". (Incidentally, she never had an abortion: the case took so long that she had the child, which was adopted.)
As I wrote the other day, "Notre Shame" is is turning into one of the biggest PR disasters of Barack Obama's presidency, and is quickly eroding his fragile support among American Catholics.
Fr John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, is now the most unpopular priest in America. He and his liberal friends simply cannot see that a Catholic university cannot hold up a campaigner for partial-birth abortions as a moral exemplar for young people, even if he is the first African-American President of the United States.
Notre Dame had been planning to give its Laetare Medal to Mary Ann Glendon, former US ambassador to the Vatican. She has now declined the honour and won't be attending. Surely the President should now do the decent thing and withdraw from this occasion. Of course many of the students would be disappointed – I imagine that most of them are pro-Obama. But it could be explained to them that Notre Dame is a Catholic university, and that actually means something.
As it is, however, I reckon this shameful event will go ahead. And you won't need to tell the students about the consequences of being at a Catholic university because, frankly, Notre Dame won't be one any more.
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