Abortion rights activist admits switching sides for $500,000
SHE was the woman at the centre of a landmark Supreme Court case that legalised abortion in the United States − one of the most controversial pieces of legislation of its day.
Norma Mccorvey, otherwise known as “Jane Roe” of Roe v Wade, had been the face of the abortion rights movement in the Seventies before suddenly switching sides in 1995 after claiming she had found religion.
It has now emerged in a deathbed confession that rather than having a change of heart, she was paid up to $500,000 (£408,500) by anti-abortion rights groups for her U-turn.
“I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That’s what I’d say,” she told makers of the documentary AKA Jane Roe, which is due for release this week.
“It was all an act,” she was asked. “Yeah, I did it well too. I am a good actress − of course I’m not acting now,” said Ms Mccorvey, who was interviewed in the last months of her life. She died at the age of 69 in 2017.
The 1973 Supreme Court ruling came after Ms Mccorvey, then a 25-year-old single woman, challenged laws in Texas that banned abortion unless the mother’s life was in danger. Henry Wade was the Texas attorney general who defended the anti-abortion law.
Ms Mccorvey first filed the case in 1969, when she was pregnant with her third child and claimed that she had been raped. But the case was rejected and she was forced to give birth.
Nearly 50 years on and abortion remains a controversial issue in the US, with many states still pushing for restrictions.
After coming she participated in several protest rallies for the next two decades, and even published a memoir in 1998 explaining her decision to change sides.
Setting the record straight about her opinion of abortion, Ms Mccorvey said: “If a young woman wants to have an abortion, fine.
“You know, that’s no skin off my a--. You know that’s why they call it choice, it’s your choice.”