Norma McCorvey aka Jane Roe, made a deathbed confession that, contrary to what she had claimed for 20 years, she was never really a pro-life Christian. She claimed she had gone along with what she was told to say because she was receiving money from pro-lifers, about half a million dollars over 20 years. As Allahpundit noted here, there’s still some cause for doubt about whether her conversion was always an act, but it’s clear that in the end she was pro-choice.

This revelation prompted a piece at GQ titled, “The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies.” Author Laura Bassett used the news about McCorvey to argue that the entire pro-life movement was a lie which only took off because of Republican racism. Exhibit A in her argument, literally the first thing Bassett pointed to as support for her thesis, was segregationist George Wallace [emphasis added]:

Before Roe, Republicans and white evangelicals generally supported abortion rights, much in the way libertarians do now, because to them it meant fewer mothers and children dependent on the government for support. Segregationists, meanwhile, had their own racist reasons. George Wallace, the the longtime Republican governor of Alabama, four-time presidential candidate and outspoken segregationist who is often compared to Donald Trump, backed the legalization of abortion in the late 1960s because he claimed black women were “breeding children as a cash crop” and taking advantage of social welfare programs.

Wallace was famous for saying, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. And segregation forever.” So there’s no doubt about what he believed about black people and abortion. The problem is that Wallace was not a longtime Republican governor of Alabama he was a longtime Democratic governor of Alabama. Oops! Here’s the corrected paragraph:

George Wallace, the longtime governor of Alabama, a Democrat who would later join the far-right American Independent Party, four-time presidential candidate, and outspoken segregationist who is often compared to Donald Trump, backed the legalization of abortion in the late 1960s because he claimed black women were “breeding children as a cash crop” and taking advantage of social welfare programs.

There is a correction at the bottom of the piece as well: “Correction 5/21: An earlier version of this piece misstated that George Wallace was a Republican. We regret the error.” Bassett also tweeted about the correction, though it appears the tweet has now been deleted:

But even her correction is misleading. It’s true that Wallace did run for President as part of the American Independent Party but that was in 1968, not in the 70s. He then ran for President in 1972 and 1976 as a Democrat. How did Bassett miss that?

It's a measure of the spread of a particular narrative of historical whitewashing of the Democratic Party that this specific error keeps happening over & over & over again, even when a man who bragged about getting an award from Wallace is the Democratic POTUS nominee in 2020. https://t.co/8ANilLVSXG

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) May 21, 2020

This is just like the idea that conservatives in Dallas somehow killed Kennedy, when it was actually a longtime communist who was responsible. It is striking how the mistakes always seem to happen in one direction.

Update: Joe Biden was apparently a fan of fellow Democrat George Wallace as late as 1987.

“Joseph Biden of Delaware, for example, tells Southerners that the lower half of his state is culturally part of Dixie; he reminds them that former Alabama Gov. George Wallace praised him as one of the outstanding young politicians of America.” – Detroit Free Press, May 1, 1987 pic.twitter.com/9QLNE1z56T

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) July 18, 2019

In case anyone from GQ is reading this, Joe Biden is a Democrat.