‘Roe’ of abort rights fame later became pro-life

NORMA McCORVEY, who reluctantly became the hero of the pro-choice movement and changed abortion rights in America under the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” has died. She was 69.

McCorvey, the plaintiff in the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, died of a heart ailment at an assisted-living facility in Katy, Tex., according to Joshua Prager, a journalist working on a book about her.

The one-time supporter of abortion rights later became a staunch pro-life advocate.

McCorvey was a 22-year-old Texan, struggling with addiction, abuse and her sexual identity, when she sought to end an unwanted pregnancy in 1969.

Restrictive Texas laws prevented her from doing so, and the case was picked up by lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. The pair took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. McCorvey, who kept her identity as “Roe” hidden until years later, gave birth before the case was decided, and the child was put up for adoption.

“I just wanted the privilege of a clean clinic to get the procedure done,” she told The New York Times in 1994. “I just never had the privilege to go into an abortion clinic, lay down and have an abortion. That’s the only thing I never had.”

Texas law banned all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother.

For years, McCorvey maintained that the pregnancy was a result of being raped, but she later recanted that claim. The Supreme Court handed down a 7-to-2 ruling that declared individual state laws banning abortion unconstitutional and set the stage for decades of fierce public debate. McCorvey published a 1994 tell-all book, “I am Roe,” that detailed her role in the struggle for reproductive rights as well as her relationships with women. A year later, McCorvey’s views on abortion changed and she became a born-again Christian. “I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie. I am dedicated to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name,” McCorvey said in a 2013 pro-life advertisement. McCorvey was born in Louisiana in 1947. Her father left her family when she was 13, leaving her in the care of her alcoholic mother. McCorvey shuffled through reform schools and married Woody McCorvey at the age of 16.

She had two children in quick succession. Both were adopted, one by her own mother. She struggled with drugs and alcohol and was kicked out of her mother’s house when she told her she was attracted to women. When she became pregnant with her third child, she sought to end the pregnancy, leading to her famous court case.

Roe vs. Wade recognized that the constitutional right to privacy extended to a women’s right to make her own personal medical decisions. The decision allows women to seek an abortion at any point during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, through the first and second trimesters.