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McCorvey, Norma

Norma McCorvey is the pseudonymous “Jane Roe” of the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States. In 1995, McCorvey recanted her position and joined the pro-life movement. Her extraordinary life story casts light on an array of issues, including the rise of the Christian Right in politics and the ways in which class tensions have informed the ongoing conflict over abortion.

Born to a poor family in 1947, McCorvey grew up mainly in Texas. In her autobiography, she recounts a hardscrabble life marred from an early age by physical, sexual, and substance abuse. By 1970, when she signed on as the plaintiff in the Texas court case that would become Roe v. Wade, she had already born and relinquished two children. Disturbed by her daughter's lesbian relationships, McCorvey's mother had seized custody of her firstborn; McCorvey herself had given the second-born up for adoption.

Roe v. Wade

Still in her early 20s, McCorvey was working as a carnival sideshow barker when she became pregnant again. She tried to find a doctor who would perform an abortion, falsely claiming to have been raped. Eventually, she was referred to two young lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who were seeking a potential plaintiff for a case designed to challenge Texas's strict abortion statute. At the time, a number states had already enacted laws allowing for “therapeutic” abortions in special cases, and Hawaii and New York were on the verge of passing legislation that legalized medical abortions up through the 24th week of pregnancy.

By the time her case reached the Supreme Court, McCorvey's relationship with Weddington and Coffee had soured, and she would later claimed that her lawyers used her as a “pawn.” (By then, Roe. v. Wade had become a class action lawsuit.) McCorvey particularly resented the fact that Weddington did not reveal that she herself had undergone an illegal abortion in Mexico in 1967. Speaking to a reporter in 1994, she complained, “When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn't, because she needed me to be pregnant for her case.” In the end, “Jane Roe” never underwent an abortion; she gave birth and put the baby up for adoption. More than two years later, the Supreme Court struck down the Texas law that had prevented her from terminating her pregnancy, along with all other state laws that criminalized abortion prior to viability.

Activism and Conversion

Roe v. Wade galvanized a “pro-life” movement that has fought ever since to recriminalize abortion. Within this ongoing battle, McCorvey has been a controversial figure since the mid-1980s. After revealing her identity in a 1984 interview, she delivered speeches on behalf of the pro-choice movement, and she later published a book, I Am Roe, which is both memoir and pro-choice manifesto. But in 1995, when working at an abortion clinic in north Dallas, she befriended members of Operation Rescue, a pro-life group that had set up shop next door to the clinic. Soon thereafter, she experienced a dramatic conversion and began working for the organization. In 1997, she founded her own outreach effort, Roe No More Ministry, and published a new book, Won by Love, in which she explains her transformation. In 2003, McCorvey became the plaintiff in a new lawsuit (McCorvey v. Hill) that attempted, unsuccessfully, to reopen Roe v. Wade.

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