Mother whose case changed America
Norma McCorvey
‘Jane Roe’ in Roe v Wade court battle that legalised abortion in the US
BORN SEPTEMBER 22, 1947 - DIED FEBRUARY 18, 2017, AGED 69
NORMA McCORVEY never wanted to be famous or part of a landmark court case that would change the social and political landscape in America. She was just a troubled 22-year-old, pregnant with her third child and wanting an abortion.
The problem was in 1970 in her home state of Texas, abortion was prohibited except in cases where the life of the mother was at risk.
She did consider a backstreet abortion but was so shocked by the squalor she couldn’t go through with it. Instead she put her faith in two lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who were desperate to challenge the ban and had been looking for a plaintiff to help them.
Although McCorvey would later come clean about her true identity, during the case she maintained her anonymity using the pseudonym of Jane Roe. Despite being at the heart of the case she had little contact with her lawyers, never went to court and wasn’t asked to testify.
It took three years for Roe v Wade (Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney) to get to the Supreme Court but on January 22, 1973, the court handed down its historic 7-to-2 ruling, articulating a constitutional right to privacy that included the choice to terminate a pregnancy. But by then McCorvey had given birth to a third daughter and surrendered her for adoption. Her second child had also been given up for adoption while her first was being raised by her mother.
Norma Leah Nelson was born in small-town Louisiana and grew up in a dysfunctional family. She married Woody McCorvey at 16 but left after she discovered she was pregnant and he became violent. By the time she gave birth to her second daughter in 1967 she was hooked on drink and drugs.
She fell pregnant for a third time two years later after a casual fling and it was then that she joined forces with Weddington and Coffee.
A decade after the landmark case McCorvey revealed she was Jane Roe and began working in abortion clinics. But in 1995, after befriending members of an anti-abortion group that rented a house next to the clinic where she worked, McCorvey changed her views, became a born-again Christian and a pro-life movement campaigner.
She wrote two memoirs, I Am Roe and Won By Love. She died of a heart condition and is survived by first child Melissa and two grandchildren. Nothing is known of the other two children she gave up for adoption.