Plaintiff in Roe v. Wade abortion case dies at 69
DALLAS — Norma McCorvey, whose legal challenge under the pseudonym “Jane Roe” led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision that legalized abortion but who later became an outspoken opponent of the procedure, died Saturday. She was 69.
McCorvey died of heart failure at an assisted living center in Katy, Texas, said journalist Joshua Prager, who is working on a book about McCorvey and was with her and her family when she died.
McCorvey was 22, unmarried, unemployed and pregnant for the third time in 1969 when she unsuccessfully sought to have an abortion in Texas, where the procedure was illegal except to save a woman’s life. Her subsequent lawsuit, known as Roe v. Wade, led to the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling that established abortion rights, though by that time, McCorvey had given birth and given her daughter up for adoption.
Decades later, McCorvey underwent a conversion, becoming an evangelic al Christian and joining the anti-abortion movement. A short time later, she underwent another religious conversion and became a Roman Catholic.
“I don’t believe in abortion even in an extreme situation. If the woman is impregnated by a rapist, it’s still a child. You’re not to act as your own God,” she said in a 1998 interview.
After the court’s ruling, McCorvey lived quietly for several years before revealing herself as Jane Roe in the 1980s. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, she remained an ardent supporter of abortion rights and worked for a time at a Dallas women’s clinic where abortions were performed.
He r 1 9 9 4 a u t o b i o g r a - phy, “I Am Roe: My Life, Ro e v. Wad e , a n d F r e e - dom of Choice,” included abortion-rights sentiments along with details about dysfunctional parents, reform school, petty crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, an abusive husband, an attempted suicide and lesbianism.
But a year later, she was baptized before network TV cameras by a most improbable mentor: The Rev. Philip “Flip” Benham, leader of Operation Rescue, now known as Operation Save America. McCorvey joined the cause and staff of Benham.
McCorvey also said her religious conversion led her to give up her lover, Connie Gonzales. She recounted her evangelical conversion and stand against abortion in the January 1998 book “Won by Love,” which ends with McCorvey happily involved with Operation Rescue.
But by August of that year, she had changed faiths to Catholic i sm and had left Operation Rescue. Though she was still against abortion, she said she had reservations about the group’s confrontational style.
McCorvey formed her own group, Roe No More Ministry, and traveled around the U.S. speaking out against abortion. In 2005, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by McCorvey to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
McCorvey was born in Louisiana. Her family then moved to Houston and later Dallas, where she stole money at the age of 10 from the gas station where she worked and ran away to Oklahoma City. She was eventually sent to a state reform school for girls, living there from the age of 11 to 15.
She married at the age of 16, but separated shortly after while she was pregnant.
She gave up that child and a second to adoption, but when she got pregnant a third time she decided to have an abortion. She said she couldn’t afford to travel to one of the handful of states where it would have been legal.
In “I Am Roe,” she said her adoption attorney put her in touch with Texas lawyers Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were seeking a woman to represent in a legal case to challenge the state’s anti-abortion statute.