“The chances are zero that her pro-life beliefs were fake,” Sullenger said. Pro-life advocate Abby Johnson said Wednesday in a statement that McCorvey called her days before she died to talk with someone else who had a “big number”—abortions for which she felt responsible. “She felt like she owned them all,” Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director, said.

A new documentary is set to drop a bombshell on the abortion debate. In AKA Jane Roe, Norma McCorvey, the Roe of Roe v. Wade, reportedly says during a “deathbed confession” that her conversion from pro-abortion heroine to pro-life activist was “all an act.”

While major media outlets are trumpeting the news, and pro-abortion activists are welcoming the opportunity to discredit the pro-life movement, many people who knew McCorvey personally insist that her Christian faith and pro-life beliefs were genuine.

“It’s impossible,” Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a longtime confidant of McCorvey, told me. He says he was with her in public and private moments and insists “the chances are zero” that McCorvey’s pro-life activism was a charade. She often sat alone quietly, Pavone said, making rosaries that she would give away.

FX will air the documentary Friday. WORLD made several requests to screen the film before it aired, but FX never responded.

McCorvey, who said she never had an abortion, was the anonymous plaintiff in the 1973 Supreme Court case that forced states to legalize abortion. But in 1995, she became a Christian and was baptized. Three years later she joined the Catholic Church, and Pavone confirmed her.

For years, McCorvey made countless public appearances at pro-life events. She hoped to undo the damage associated with her controversial alias. In 2005, she testified before the U.S. Senate, urging senators to do “everything in [their] power to reverse Roe v. Wade.”

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