He was clearly pro-choice, but he worried about the implications of our viewing abortion too casually. He stressed the uniqueness of the new cells which combined the chromosomes of the sperm and ovum, and suggested that was due some respect. I was impressed by his comments, and I began to change my language, but not my bottom line commitment to choice. But, as a result, I began to find myself occasionally under attack by proponents of choice who insisted that it was a betrayal, a sell out to the opposition to suggest that abortion was more than a casual matter, and that there were any moral or emotional issues to deal with. I know from experience that that is not true.
Some women do.
I still remember the ire that Ronald Reagan's pro-life Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, drew from his patron when he announced that as hard as he had looked, and as much as he personally expected and wanted to find it, he could find no credible evidence whatever of a significant negative emotional impact of abortion on large numbers of women. One of the best articles on the subject of abortion that I have encountered was written by Naomi Wolf and published in the New Republic Magazine in October 1995. I'm like a lot of people. I'm in the mushy middle. That does not seem consistent with the testimony that Ms. McCorvey gave to the Senate Committee in January in which she expressed her desire that Roe v. Wade not have a thirtieth anniversary.