Banner Graphic, Volume 18, Number 2, Greencastle, Putnam County, 9 September 1987 — Page 2

THE BANNERGRAPHIC Septembers, 1987

A2

She lied

18 years later, truth comes out in landmark case

c. 1987 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON The woman whose challenge to a state law prohibiting abortion led to the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision now says she lied when she declared that it was rape that had caused her pregnancy. This element of the case was not at all a factor in the Supreme Court’s ruling, which established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, a decision that has stirred emotional debate ever since it was handed down 14 years ago. The disclosure by Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” in Roe vs. Wade, came in an interview with the syndicated newspaper columnist Carl T. Rowan, The interview was part of a television documentary to be broadcast Sunday in Washington on station WUSA, which issued a transcript Tuesday. McCorvey told Rowan that she had fabricated her account of being raped by three men and a woman in 1969 because she hoped to circumvent a 100-year-old law in Texas, where she lived, that banned abortions except when a woman’s life was in danger. The transcript does not make clear why this account would necessarily have overcome the law, and neither McCorvey nor Rowan could be reached for comment Tuesday. McCorvey said that she had actually become pregnant “through what I thought was love” and that, when told by her doctor that she could not get an abortion in Texas, she decided to challenge the state law. In 1970, her lawyers filed

Wheelchair-bound man kills wife with string-triggered gun.

HOUSTON (AP) A quadriplegic who police say killed his wife using a wheelchair-mounted gun triggered by a string in his teeth contends he meant the bullets for himself, not for his bride of two weeks. “Somehow the string got pulled ... somehow she pushed my head back,” James B. Burns, 40, said Tuesday from his bed at his mother’s house, where he lives. Witnesses told police that Bertha Mae Jjjurns, 37, had placed the string iq, Her husband’s mouth in a bar Monday night. She was shot in the neck and died before paramedics arrived. Homicide Detective A.J. Toepel said murder charges against Burns would be filed today. Burns is in his mother’s custody, the detective said. “According to witnesses, they were sitting there talking in quiet tones,” Toepelsaid. “She then got up and put a string in his mouth and he jerked his head back once and the gun went off. “She said, ‘You’ve shot me,’ and then he jerked his head back two more times and two more shots were fired, and she said, ‘You’ve killed me,’ and then she collapsed to the floor.”

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Kid of the Week t Jennifer Heavin Age: 4 Wearing Bryan from jf* .AfSk ™ E ROCKING Jr '"nt- horse RBl\. i ’ ■ The Children's Specialty Store ■y' r I ' 15 W. Franklin r ( V, Greencastle / > V JP (North side of the Square) < 653-2970 Photo by Gjesvold 1062 Indianapolis Rd. Greencastle /Ik ft 6533272 A .fl fl

suit in Federal District Court in Dallas, identifying her as “Jane Roe.” The Supreme Court eventually ruled in her favor and legalized abortion on Jan. 22,1973. McCorvey was 21 years old when she became pregnant. At the time, she was working as a waitress and, she told Rowan, was too poor to travel to California, the closest state where abortion was legal, or to afford local illegal abortionists. “I was very depressed,” she said. “How dare them tell me that I couldn’t abort a baby that I did not want.” Unable to get an abortion in Texas or travel to another state, she said, she put the baby up for adoption. She was “bitter, very bitter,” and in her anger fabricated the rape story. By the time the Supreme Court agreed in 1973 to hear Roe vs. Wade, the child she had put up for adoption was 2 years old. According to a news release about the interview, Sarah Weddington, one of the lawyers who took the case to the Supreme Court, said she never “touched the issue of rape and only emphasized the question of whether the Constituion gives to the state or leaves to a woman the questions of what she can or must do with her body.” McCorvey has an unlisted number in Dallas, and could not be reached Tuesday night for comment.

Bums, who according to his mother, Mae Donna Burns, has been paralyzed since a previous wife shot him nine years ago, said that he loved his new wife and wanted her to kill him. Somehow, he said, she turned the situation around. Toepel said police have no idea why Mrs. Burns placed the string in her husband’s mouth. Toepel described the apparatus as a 9mm pistol mounted on a small board that the gunman had across his lap. A string ran around two small screws in the board with one end running to the trigger and the other to his mouth. The device was covered with what looked like a shoe box, Toepel said. Police said Tuesday they are looking for whoever helped construct the device, since it would have been impossible for the quadriplegic to do it himself. Viola Jewell Stacy said she saw Mrs. Burns take “the end of the string and put it in his mouth.” Mona Cantrell, another witness, said Burns, after the shooting, sat there “just as calm like it was all a movie or something. He never showed any emotion, nothing.”

Security teams scramble to be ready for Pope

By MIKE SILVERMAN Associated Press Writer Carpenters pounded nails into place on outdoor altars, security teams welded down manhole covers and church officials scrambled to meet budgets today as cities from coast to coast prepared for the pope’s second U.S. tour. In Miami, the first of nine cities John Paul II will visit in 10 days beginning Thursday, Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy set a tone of public celebration Tuesday by blessing a giant rosary dangling from a downtown apartment building. The rosary consisted of 50 Styrofoam beads, each 2 feet by 8 inches, extending 80 feet across the building and hanging over a 12-foot-

Bush chief adviser knew North plans

c. 1987 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON Vice President George Bush’s chief adviser on national security policy learned in August 1986 that Lt. Col. Oliver L. North was instrumental in shipping weapons to the rebels in Nicaragua, according to sworn testimony released today. But the adviser, Donald P. Gregg, testified that he did not tell the vice president about Colonel North’s activities because “I frankly did not think it was vice presidental level.” Investigators seemed skeptical that Gregg would not have told the vice president what he had learned about North, then a member of the National Security Council staff. Bush has insisted he did not know anyone in the administration was helping furnish weapons to the contras, a possible violation of congressional restrictions on assisting the rebels, until the matter became public last fall. Gayle Fisher, a spokeswoman for the vice president, repeated that position Tuesday, and nothing in the Gregg testimony contradicts it. Gregg’s testimony was given May 18 to lawyers for the congressional committees investigating the Irancontra affair. As has been the case with other witnesses who were not called to testify in public session, the committees decided to release his sworn deposition. The committees completed public hearings last month. Over the last

by-8-foot wooden cross. From Miami, the pope will fly to Columbia, S.C., then New Orleans; San Antonio, Texas; Phoenix, Ariz.; Los Angeles; Monterey, Calif., and San Francisco. His final U.S. stop is in Detroit, but before heading back to Rome, he will visit Fort Simpson in Canada’s Northwest Territories on Sept. 20. Most of the stops are in the Sunbelt, where the Hispanic population plays an increasingly vital role among the nation’s 53 million Roman Catholics, and where the pope’s visit is sure to produce huge crowds. In Phoenix, for instance, so many people are expected to throng the streets Monday that the U.S. Postal Service said mail delivery might be

gw m SEPT. 13-18 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. & 6 p.m. Sunday 7:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri. JOHNIE EDWARDS Preaching Greencastle Church of Christ St. Rd. 240 East, Greencastle

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NORMA McCORVEY She was 'Jane R oe'

four weeks, with Congress in recess, staff lawyers have been working on a final report, due to be released in October. Gregg has granted interviews and made public statements, so his testimony contained no surprising revelations. But the deposition is important because it was given under oath, because it provided some new details and because it contained the first public indication that investigators were skeptical that Gregg would have withheld sensitive information from Bush. In his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush has tried to walk a thin line between expressing loyalty to President Reagan and disassociating himself from the administration’s activities in Iran and Nicaragua. Gregg, a former CIA official, testified he had introduced the vice president to Felix Rodriguez, a friend from his CIA days and an expert in counterinsurgency tactics, and had arranged for Rodriguez to go to El Salvador in 1985 to help the government there combat Communist insurgents. In August 1986, Gregg said, Rodriguez met with him in Washington and complained that a group led by Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and reporting to North was profiteering in arms transactions with the Nicaraguan contras. Rodriguez described the meeting in his public testimony in May.

postponed a day. Aside from that possible complication, Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien said “every ‘i’ has been dotted and every ‘t’ has been crossed” in the way of preparations.” O’Brien said a special collection would be taken up in churches Sunday in hopes of raising the last $150,000 of the $1.5 million budgeted for the visit. In San Antonio, the Rev. Larry Stuebben, chairman of the Texas Papal Visit Committee, said a $2.5 million goal was still $600,000 short, but he remained optimistic. In each city along his route, the pope, who survived a May 1981 assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, will ride in an en-

world

Cabinet resigns to allow Aquino to reorganize

MANILA, Philippines (AP) President Corazon Aquino’s entire Cabinet resigned today to allow her to reorganize a government widely assailed since last month’s bloody coup attempt. Presidential spokesman Teodoro Benigno said 28 officials, including the 25 Cabinet members and three others from the Presidential Commission on Good Government, submitted their resignations during a 15minute emergency Cabinet meeting. Mrs. Aquino curtly declined to comment on possible personnel changes. Asked by reporters when she would announce the new Cabinet, Mrs. Aquino snapped: “You will know.” Palace sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she went straight from the meeting to a studio to record an announcement. “The Cabinet felt it was appropriate for everyone to tender their resignation so that the president can have a totally free hand if she feels a need for a revamp,” said Finance Secretary Jaime Ongpin. Benigno said Vice President Salvador Laurel, who is on a tour of Mindanao, submitted his resignation as foreign affairs secretary by telephone. Laurel remains vice president. Among those who resigned was Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo, considered the second most powerful

Reagan hoping for 'good curtain call'

c. 1987 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON President Reagan, saying he wanted to end with “a good curtain call,” Tuesday outlined his agenda for his remaining 16 months in office and set as his top domestic goal the Senate’s confirmation of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court. At a meeting of senior administration officials. Reagan said his other priorities included an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, the restoration of “true democracy” in Nicaragua, a budgetbalancing amendment, the right to veto specific budget items while ap-

closed, bulletproof car known as the “popemobile.” Police, National Guardsmen and Secret Service agents plan to divert rush-hour traffic, weld manholes shut, station sharpshooters on roofs and even make airliners change course. During his first stop, in Miami, the pope will be protected by 2,000 Dade police officers, 1,000 Miami officers, 2,400 National Guardsmen, 900 state troopers, scores of Secret Service agents and a contingent from the Vatican’s own Swiss Guard. They’ll be equipped with rifles, bombsniffing dogs, 9mm automatics and pistol-grip grenade launchers. “This will certainly be the biggest combined law enforcement effort in South Florida’s history,” said Jack

Venezuelan flood toll expected to top 200

MARACAY, Venezuela, (AP) Rescue crews today dug for bodies along a three-mile stretch of mountain road where a torrent of mud swept away hundreds of cars. At least 200 people were reported dead in the mudslide and floods. More than 250 people were missing, 1,000 were injured and 20,000 left homeless following heavy rains Sunday that left a trail of destruction from the Ocumare resort on Venezuela’s northern coast to the city of Maracay, 20 miles south. No official casualty figures were released and officials said a thorough search for bodies could take weeks. Soldiers, civil defense units and volunteers today turned to digging out bodies near the mountain road

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CORAZON AQUINO Entire cabinet quits

person in the government. The resignations followed growing calls for a government reorganization after the Aug. 28 coup attempt, the most serious challenge to the 18-month Aquino administration. The government has since been widely criticized for lack of leadership. Arroyo’s ouster had been demanded by business and military groups and members of Congress who have urged the government to toughen its stand against Communist rebels and halt a cycle of right-wing coup attempts.

proving the rest of a bill and an “economic bill of rights” that would stress turning over some “appropriate” government activities to the i ?ivate sector. The president was silent, however, on some topics at the heart of the conservative agenda on social issues, including a proposed congressional ban on federal funds for abortion, Reagan said he hoped that the rest of his term would reflect a show business maxim: “The whole philosophy was, when you come to town, open big. And now, well, it’s time for an even bigger finish, and a good curtain call.”

Kippenberger, special agent in charge of Miami’s Secret Service office. The Archdiocese of San Francisco and a national gay Catholic group on Tuesday signed a statement condemning violence and promoting free speech during John Paul’s visit. “I may not agree with the pope, but I will defend his right to speak,” said Tom Carroll, regional director for Dignity, a gay Catholic group. Gays have promised protests during the pontiff’s visit. In many of the cities on the tour, workmen are completing special facilities to accommodate the crowds expected for a series of papal Masses.

that links Ocumare and Maracay. On Tuesday, they evacuated more than 1,000 survivors along the twolanehighway. “It is a very ugly disaster. There must be plenty of dead still up there,” said Col. Hector Vargas, The highway had been jammed with familes returning from beach outings Sunday when tons of mud, boulders and uprooted trees swept down the mountain, knocking hundreds of cars off the road and burying scores of them. A civil defense official said: “I can’t give you official figures because we don’t know ourselves. But if you say around 150 cars buried and at least 200 people killed, I don’t think you can go wrong, according to what we’re seeing now. ”