Buzz
To the public, she was known as Jane Roe. But to those close to her, she was simply Norma.
Norma McCorvey, the woman at the heart of the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion in the United States—though recently overturned in a 6-3 Supreme Court decision—described herself in her 1994 memoir as 'a rough woman, born into pain and anger and raised mostly by myself.' At 22, McCorvey, a carnival worker, found herself pregnant with her third child in 1970 and sought an abortion. She had previously given birth to a daughter during an abusive teenage marriage and another during a short relationship, placing both children for adoption. This time, however, she wanted to terminate her pregnancy.
In Texas, where McCorvey lived, abortion was only permitted if the mother’s life was at risk. To challenge this law, McCorvey filed a lawsuit with attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who were looking for a plaintiff. For her privacy, McCorvey was assigned the pseudonym 'Jane Roe' in the lawsuit against Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney. The case took years to reach the Supreme Court, offering little help to McCorvey, who gave birth to a third daughter and put her up for adoption. However, when Roe v. Wade was finally decided in 1973, it provided significant reproductive rights to Americans.
McCorvey kept her identity secret until the 1980s, when she publicly became a strong advocate for abortion rights. However, in 1995, after years of working in abortion clinics and living openly as a lesbian with her partner Connie Gonzalez, she shocked the world by announcing she had become a born-again Christian, now focused on overturning Roe v. Wade.
At the time, McCorvey said, 'My goal now is to win other people over to Jesus and persuade some young women not to make the mistake of getting an abortion,' as she told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Yet in the 2020 documentary AKA Jane Roe, McCorvey revealed that her dramatic conversion was merely an act, financially supported by evangelical anti-abortion groups.
'I took their money and they put me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say,' McCorvey states in the film. 'I am a good actress.'
McCorvey passed away in 2017 at 69 due to heart failure. She is remembered as the public figure representing both abortion rights and, ironically, the opposition to those rights in America, leaving a lasting impact on the nation’s political landscape—one that remains relevant even half a century later.
