‘Jane Roe’ is anonymous no more. The very public fight against abortion bans in 2023

By Selena Simmons-Duffin, Sarah McCammon, NPR
December 26, 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, so too does the first full year of the post-Roe era in America. Some of the year's developments were expected, like more conservative states enacting abortion restrictions. Others were surprising, like the fact that there were more abortions nationally in the year after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision than the previous one.

In the final weeks of the year, the country followed the story of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two in Texas, as she sought to end a tragic pregnancy to ensure she could have a future one.
Here is the state of play when it comes to abortion heading into 2024.

Continued: https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/npr-news/2023-12-26/jane-roe-is-anonymous-no-more-the-very-public-fight-against-abortion-bans-in-2023

26.12.2023

#WeCount

Center for Reproductive Rights

Society of Family Planning

Ushma Upadhyay

WeCount

Sarah Weddington, Texan who argued Roe vs. Wade before the Supreme Court, dies at 76

Weddington’s death comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the most serious challenge to the landmark abortion rights case in years.

By BeLynn Hollers, Dallas News
Dec 26, 2021

Sarah Weddington, a trailblazer for women’s rights known for her role arguing the landmark Roe vs. Wade case before the U.S. Supreme Court, died in her sleep Sunday morning. She was 76.

Weddington is best known as the youngest person to argue before the high court at age 26 in 1971 -- in one of the most controversial cases in the court’s history, Roe vs. Wade. The milestone ruling in the case that legalized abortion came in 1973.

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/12/26/roe-vs-wade-lawyer-sarah-weddington-passes-away/

Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

Martin Pengelly in New York
Sun 26 Dec 2021

Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.

Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/26/sarah-weddington-attorney-who-won-roe-v-wade-abortion-case-dies-aged-76

How the Real Jane Roe Shaped the Abortion Wars

The all-too-human plaintiff of Roe v. Wade captured the messy contradictions hidden by a polarizing debate.

By Margaret Talbot
September 13, 2021

Roe v. Wade may be the rare Supreme Court decision that most Americans can name, but it’s also one of the few that many volubly disparage—and not just anti-abortion activists who want to get rid of it altogether. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a staunch advocate of access to abortion but an open critic of the reasoning behind Roe. She thought the rationale should have centered on preventing sex discrimination rather than on preserving a right to privacy. “The image you get from reading the Roe v. Wade opinion is it’s mostly a doctor’s-rights case—a doctor’s right to prescribe what he thinks his patient needs,” Ginsburg told the legal writer and scholar Jeffrey Rosen, in 2019. “My idea of how choice should have developed was not a privacy notion, not a doctor’s-right notion, but a woman’s right to control her own destiny, to be able to make choices without a Big Brother state telling her what she can and cannot do.”

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/how-the-real-jane-roe-shaped-the-abortion-wars

‘Roe baby’ whose conception sparked landmark abortion ruling comes forward to share her name — and her story

Shelley Lynn Thornton was publicly identified in an excerpt published from an upcoming book

Timothy Bella
September 9, 2021

The child of “Jane Roe,” whose conception brought about the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade on a woman’s legal right to an abortion, came forward for the first time Thursday after decades of secrecy where she was known only as the “Roe baby.”

Shelley Lynn Thornton was publicly identified in an excerpt published in the Atlantic of journalist Joshua Prager’s upcoming book “The Family Roe: An American Story,” which explores those connected to the landmark 1973 case. In the excerpt, Thornton, 51, of Tucson, opened up about her life and the complex family history connected to the “Roe baby” over the last half-century.

Continued: https://www.thelily.com/roe-baby-whose-conception-sparked-landmark-abortion-ruling-comes-forward-to-share-her-name-and-her-story/

09.09.2021

The Family Roe: An American Story

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/