What Norma McCorvey Believed Matters

What Norma McCorvey Believed Matters
The original plaintiff behind Roe v. Wade is more than just a symbol in the abortion rights debate.

Mary Ziegler, The Atlantic
May 31, 2020

Last weekend, FX premiered AKA Jane Roe, a documentary on Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade. Backers of the film touted its most explosive revelation—that McCorvey, Jane Roe herself, had converted to the anti-abortion cause only because she was getting paid. This news made waves, and the attention it received has raised, in turn, a bigger question: Why does it matter at all what she really thought about abortion?

The constitutional-law expert Michael Dorf has argued that it doesn’t—or at least that clashing social movements have blown its significance way out of proportion. He contends that when it comes to the ultimate fate of abortion rights, McCorvey’s beliefs matter very little.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/why-norma-mccorvey-matters/612295/

FX’s Jane Roe deathbed confession reveals the abortion lie at the heart of the religious right

FX's Jane Roe deathbed confession reveals the abortion lie at the heart of the religious right
The religious right worked to convince McCorvey that abortion was the great defining evil of our time. Then they used her story to push the same line on vulnerable Americans.

May 26, 2020
By Katherine Stewart

Since it has already made the news, let’s go ahead and spoil the film. Toward the end of FX’s “AKA Jane Roe,” we learn that anti-abortion activists used a pile of money and heavy doses of psychological manipulation to convert Norma McCorvey — the actual plaintiff in Roe v. Wade — into a trophy for their cause. The documentary makes for compelling viewing, especially in its final moments, when, McCorvey tells us that, to paraphrase Bob Seger, they used her, she used them, and neither one cared.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/fx-s-jane-roe-deathbed-confession-reveals-abortion-lie-heart-ncna1214381

26.05.2020

Jane Roe's deathbed confession

How the Anti-Abortion Movement Is Responding to Jane Roe’s “Deathbed Confession”

How the Anti-Abortion Movement Is Responding to Jane Roe’s “Deathbed Confession”

By Ruth Graham
May 22, 2020

The pro-life movement has always loved a conversion story. People who reject their former lives working for pro-choice causes are some of the most prominent voices in the movement, and the existence of abortion regret—a woman changing her mind after it’s too late—is a key legislative and rhetorical tactic. So when the real-life “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade announced two decades after that landmark Supreme Court case that she had realized abortion ought to be illegal after all, she became an instant star within the pro-life movement.

A bombshell documentary airing Friday night on FX adds a final shocking twist to Norma McCorvey’s ideologically eventful life. In AKA Jane Roe, McCorvey offers what she calls a “deathbed confession”: Actually, she was basically pro-choice all along and only became a pro-life activist for the money.

Continued: https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/jane-roe-norma-mccorvey-confession-anti-abortion.html

USA – No One Really Knew Jane Roe Her shocking deathbed confession makes that clear.

No One Really Knew Jane Roe Her shocking deathbed confession makes that clear.

By Callie Beusman
May 21, 2020

Norma McCorvey spent most of her life as a symbol. At age 22 — mired in poverty, a survivor of childhood abuse, and pregnant against her will for the third time — she became Jane Roe: the anonymous plaintiff at the center of Roe v. Wade, an emblem of the cruelty of America’s abortion bans, whose case eventually enshrined the right to choose into the constitution. To feminists, her pseudonym became synonymous with the battle for liberation and bodily autonomy. To the Christian right, it made her the new face of evil. But then, two decades after the ruling that made her a national figure, Jane Roe abruptly defected from the pro-choice side. In the welcoming waters of an anti-abortion extremist’s swimming pool, she was baptized and born again as an unlikely spokesperson for the movement, appearing on TV and at protests across the nation to denounce the killing of the unborn, cross necklace glinting at her throat. “The poster child has jumped off the poster,” the head of a local anti-abortion group gleefully proclaimed at the time.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2020/05/jane-roe-norma-mccorvey-deathbed-confession-abortion.html

The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies

The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies

This week, it was revealed that Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. “Jane Roe,” admitted on her death bed that her late-career anti-abortion crusade was all a ruse funded by the Christian right. Laura Bassett takes a hard look at the house of cards the American anti-abortion movement was built upon.

By Laura Bassett
May 20, 2020

In 1973, the plaintiff “Jane Roe” brought a case to the Supreme Court that would legalize abortion throughout America. So it was quite a surprise when, in the mid-1990s, Roe, whose real name was Norma McCorvey, suddenly emerged as an anti-abortion activist. She wrote a book about her change of heart, spoke at multiple annual March for Life rallies, and even filed a motion in 2003 to get the Supreme Court to re-decide her case. “I deeply regret the damage my original case caused women,” she said at the time. “I want the Supreme Court to examine the evidence and have a spirit of justice for women and children.”

Continued: https://www.gq.com/story/jane-roe-anti-abortion-lies/

USA – Roe v Wade plaintiff admits abortion rights reversal ‘was all an act’ in new film

Roe v Wade plaintiff admits abortion rights reversal ‘was all an act’ in new film
Norma McCorvey, known as Jane Roe, reveals she was paid by evangelical Christian groups to take anti-abortion stance

Kenya Evelyn in Washington
Tue 19 May 2020

Norma McCorvey, most notable for being the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade that led to abortion becoming legal in the United States, made a stunning admission just before her death in 2017, it has emerged.

“This is my deathbed confession,” she explained.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/19/roe-v-wade-norma-mccorvey-abortion-rights-documentary-aka-jane-roe?CMP=share_btn_link=

USA – Jane Roe’s Deathbed Confession: Anti-Abortion Conversion ‘All an Act’ Paid for by the Christian Right

Jane Roe’s Deathbed Confession: Anti-Abortion Conversion ‘All an Act’ Paid for by the Christian Right
The new FX documentary “AKA Jane Roe,” out May 22, contains a shocking revelation: Roe (of “Roe v. Wade” fame) played the part of an anti-abortion crusader in exchange for money.

Cassie da Costa, Entertainment Writer
Published May. 19, 2020

In its final 20 minutes, the documentary film AKA Jane Roe delivers quite the blow to conservatives who have weaponized the story of Jane Roe herself—real name, Norma McCorvey—to argue that people with uteruses should have to carry any and all pregnancies to term.

McCorvey, who died in 2017, became Jane Roe when, as a young homeless woman, she was unable to get a legal or safe abortion in the state of Texas. Her willingness to lend her experience to the legal case for abortion led to the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortions in all 50 states (though red states do all they can to get around this; recently, several have even used the COVID-19 pandemic to make abortions functionally impossible to procure). But conservatives had a field day in the mid-‘90s when the assertive, media-savvy pro-choice advocate and activist McCorvey became an anti-abortion born-again ex-gay Christian with the help of leaders of the evangelical Christian right, Reverend Flip Benham (of the infamous Operation Rescue) and Reverend Rob Schenck. A conservative film, Roe v. Wade, starring Jon Voight and Stacey Dash, will dramatize McCorvey’s “conversion.”

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/jane-roe-confesses-anti-abortion-conversion-all-an-act-paid-for-by-the-christian-right

USA – The woman behind ‘Roe vs. Wade’ didn’t change her mind on abortion. She was paid

The woman behind ‘Roe vs. Wade’ didn’t change her mind on abortion. She was paid
By Meredith BlakeStaff Writer
May 19, 2020
9 AM

When Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff in the landmark Roe vs. Wade case, came out against abortion in 1995, it stunned the world and represented a huge symbolic victory for abortion opponents: “Jane Roe” had gone to the other side. For the remainder of her life, McCorvey worked to overturn the law that bore her name.

But it was all a lie, McCorvey says in a documentary filmed in the months before her death in 2017, claiming she only did it because she was paid by antiabortion groups including Operation Rescue.