Has there been a more divisive issue than that of Pro-Choice?  That’s what we called it, back in the day.  Not pro-abortion.  Pro-Choice.  The 2024 presidential ballot is more than a party vote, though party division is certainly playing a vital role while considering what is at stake.  In a previous post, I spoke to our democracy, our rights, and our freedom.  There is no question that all are critical to the survival of our great nation but, here, I would like to focus on freedom, specifically freedom to choose.

So, I would like to tell you about the day I met Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. Jane Roe of the landmark case Roe v. Wade.

Norma McCorvey published her autobiography, “I Am Roe: My Life, Roe v. Wade, and Freedom of Choice” in 1994.  I interviewed her for my show on a non-profit radio service where I provided programming interviewing authors of newly released books.  

I’ve been foraging through tapes trying to find the interview.  I wanted to, once again, hear the tone of the voice that lived the story but, alas, it’s going to take some time sorting through years of cassette tapes.  So, I did what I always do.  I pulled her book off the shelf.  

The first paragraph of her story begins:

My name is Norma McCorvey.  But you know me as “Jane Roe”.  Twenty-one years ago, when I was poor, alone and pregnant, I was the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade.  This was the Supreme Court case that gave American women the right to choose abortion, to control their own bodies, lives, and destinies.  To overturn Roe v. Wade – to make abortion illegal again – is one of the main goals of…powerful people who call themselves “pro-life”.

I don’t know what or who I was expecting.  Perhaps the rough, tough, scrappy, angry woman she portrays in her book.  She wrote, “I am not a gentle woman.  Or a sophisticated one…I would like to be that kind of woman.  But I am not.”  But the woman sitting in the chair next to me was quiet, at first not seeming not very comfortable in that setting, talking about her life, though I wasn’t her first interview.  Physically, her appearance didn’t match the very public, larger-than-life media presence, speaking in a soft voice, an effortless, easy smile for the entire segment.  Vulnerable.  

As I recall, the interview went well with me, the interviewer, gently encouraging her to feel comfortable speaking about her life.  Until, out of the blue, she decided she wanted to share a very real moment. Suddenly, she asked me, “Would you like to see my scars?”  I was taken aback, to say the least.  First, because she now was willing to speak up on her own and I wasn’t expecting her spontaneity.  Second, because it was also out of the context of the interview.  Clearly, she was feeling safe enough to share something significant in her story.

I believe I said something profound like “Sure,” as she rolled up her sleeve, showing me her wrist where she had attempted to take her life, not for the first time.  This being a radio interview and aware of dead air, I tried to describe what was happening.  I remember thinking, “What should I do now?”, though I did my best for the listeners and for Norma.  It was a sobering moment I’m not sure I handled easily.  Her life experience was summed up in that one, unprompted, genuine moment.  In her words, she was a woman who saw herself as “…bad, stupid, hopeless…A person who should never have been born” who often saw herself as a failure.  Invisible.

There are volumes written about Norma McCorvey and Jane Roe, so I won’t attempt to tell her life story, here.  She was a complex person who lived a complicated life.  A woman who self-identified as a lesbian, whose encounters with men resulted in unwanted pregnancies.  She never had an abortion.  Three children were born, two of which she relinquished to adoption, the first raised by her mother in the same unstable environment she, herself, experienced as a child.  Alcohol and drugs alternately fueled and softened her pain.  

It was her single-minded mission to seek a legal abortion when pregnant with her third child, in Texas, where abortion wasn’t legal.  She didn’t even know the word for ending a pregnancy until she called her doctor’s office, and the nurse spelled it for her, telling her to look it up in a dictionary.  An attorney who offered to help her through adoption introduced her to the two young female attorneys who, through their own ambition, convinced her to become the plaintiff in the landmark case, Roe v. Wade.  

The road to victory didn’t come easy.  Uninformed and not educated to the ways of the legal system, McCorvey mistakenly believed the path to a legal abortion would come quickly.  Of course, nothing does.  While the case made its way to the Supreme Court, she gave birth to her third child.  Communication between the attorneys and McCorvey dwindled long before the case was won.  As she writes in her book, she learned about their victory the same way we all did – in a newspaper.

There are many opinions as to whether McCorvey was exploited and used as a means to an end, both during and after Roe v. Wade was established.  I don’t think it matters what we think.  What matters is what she felt.  

She wrote: “I realized, finally, that I wasn’t the wrong person to become Jane Roe.  I wasn’t the right person to become Jane Roe.  I was just the person who became Jane Roe…. And my life story, warts and all was a little piece of history, no matter what I or anyone else said.”

So, here we are in 2024, back to where we were prior to1973, fighting for a woman’s right and freedom to choose, debating, rehashing, and defending that right.  In 2022, almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade was passed by the Supreme Court, that same court overturned Roe v. Wade.  Different Justices, same Court.

Now, I don’t think it’s for me to advise you how to feel about this conflict-ridden issue.  I will say I’m grateful that it’s not something I’ve ever had to face, myself.  In no way is this a black and white issue.  I will also say this… For the life of me, I do not understand why a decision as personal and private as this is in the hands of the government.  The idea that a women’s reproductive health is not between her and her doctor is an enigma to me.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I didn’t feel then, and still don’t, that the issue of health and safety of both mother and child had been adequately weighed by the Court, i.e., when a woman’s inability to deliver a healthy child and/or whose life, hers included, is in jeopardy what exceptions are place to ensure appropriate care.  Was this even considered?  I don’t think so.  There are Justices on the Court who are women – mothers with families.  What was their thinking?  I’d like to know.

That a physician, by law, has to refuse emergency care when treating a pregnant woman in peril, with threat of losing their license or imprisonment or both makes absolutely no logical sense.  Can you imagine being a patient, whose life is in danger, with a doctor treating that patient now rendered powerless by law?  Someone needs to explain this to me.

There is a widely held belief by some that abortion is used, solely, by women as merely a vehicle for birth control.  There are women who, for reasons of their own, choose elective abortions when deciding they cannot carry a child to term.  Their decision was not about health, rape, or incest, but should it be assumed that a lack of responsibility led them to this decision?  I’m the first to admit that conversations around the issue can and do become heated.  Feelings are complicated, including my own.  But who am I?  Who am I to pass judgment?  I’m not walking in their shoes.   This is called Choice.

In this country we often have history amnesia.  History is about those who came before us, who carried the water and labored in the trenches for us.  History is reciprocal – we experience, we learn, we pass it on.  The story of Norma McCorvey a.k.a. Jane Roe is a chapter in our history.  We learn from history that victories were won while grappling with more than good intentions.  The road to Roe v. Wade was a prolonged, tentative climb, above all for the plaintiff.

Retreating behind Jane Roe made it easier for Norma McCorvey to publicly sidestep a matter as incendiary as abortion – for a while.  Encouraged to remove the mask, come out of hiding, and identify her role as Jane Roe to the world, she was faced with anything but hero worship and there was a price to pay.  Threats on her life, gun shots through her window, and the list goes on.

What hasn’t changed in the years since Roe v. Wade is the polarizing, combustible rhetoric often resulting in harmful actions. We dodge in and out of the question of reproductive freedom, often avoiding the subject altogether, either avoiding discussion or confronting the subject with intense passion.  There is no gray area.  There’s a lot of handwringing and heated debate and that’s okay.  But violence?   Inflammatory language?  If we can’t fuel the debate with respectful discourse, then the unfortunate truth is that we cannot hear each other.  And if we can’t hear each other, we will not learn from each other.  We’re stagnant.  It’s a stalemate.

My faith is strong.  I abide by it every day.  I’m not perfect.  I’ve been known to ask the good Lord for forgiveness.  But I believe my faith does not preclude supporting our individual rights as women, men, and families and that the two can co-exist.  

There is a postscript to the Norma McCorvey a.k.a. Jane Roe story…

Over two decades after the passing of Roe v. Wade, it was widely publicized that Norma McCorvey changed course and had a change of heart.  In a documentary, A.K.A. Jane Roe, she reveals that her declaration as a pro-life advocate was all an act.  McCorvey was recruited and paid by an Evangelical pro-life organization to, as she said in what she called her deathbed confession, do what they told her to do for which she was paid.  She confessed, “I was the big fish (to them).  I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money, and they put me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say.”  Privately, she remained pro-choice to her last breath.  McCorvey passed away in a nursing home in 2017. 

The story of Jane Roe doesn’t end here.  Norma McCorvey may have passed from this earth, but the legacy of Jane Roe remains.  So, let’s ask ourselves, where do we go from here?  Whether we agree or not, reproductive freedom is, once again, driven not only by our government but by our own action.  

The issues at stake in the 2024 election go beyond Choice and abortion.  Nevertheless, there is one principle on which this country succeeds.  Democracy.  Without democracy we do not have our rights and our freedom.  A vote for democracy is a vote for the freedom to exercise our rights – all of them.

For ourselves and for those who follow, this is our chance to right the ship where we’ve faltered.

Vote for Democracy.  That’s my choice.

Just my thoughts…

If interested, “I Am Roe: My Life, Roe v. Wade, and Freedom of Choice” by Norma McCorvey with Andy Meisler, is available on Amazon.   You might also check out Good Reads online or your local public library.

“A.K.A. Jane Roe”, documentary, is available on Hulu

As one who promotes the joy of reading in any form, I am happy to share where you might find books referenced in this blog.  I generate no revenue for myself from Amazon or any other venues suggested.