Norma McCorvey

Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff “Jane Roe” in the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion virtually on demand, died Feb. 18 at an assisted-living facility in Katy, Texas. She was 69.

Ms. McCorvey became a pro-life supporter in 1995 after spending years as a proponent of legal abortion. She also became a born-again Christian. A couple of years later, she said she felt called to join the Catholic Church of her youth. Her mother was Catholic and her father was a Jehovah’s Witness. After instruction in the faith, she was accepted into the Church in 1998.

Born in Simmesport, La., Norma Leah Nelson was raised briefly at her family’s home in Lettsworth, La. The family later moved to Houston. McCorvey was 13 when her father left. Her parents divorced, and she and her older brother were raised by their mother.

Norma married Woody McCorvey when she was 16. When she was pregnant with the couple’s first child, she moved in with her mother. She gave birth to daughter Melissa in 1965. She struggled with alcoholism and came out as a lesbian. The following year, Ms. McCorvey became pregnant with her second child, who was put up for adoption.

In 1969, when she was 21 and became pregnant a third time, she tried to obtain an illegal abortion but had no luck as state authorities had shut down such operations. She was referred to lawyers seeking a plaintiff for an abortion suit against the state of Texas. The case took three years to reach the Supreme Court. Ms. McCorvey gave her baby up for adoption.

“I did sign the affidavit that brought the holocaust of abortion into this nation,” Ms. McCorvey said later. Still, she said that she “found out about Roe v. Wade like everyone else did—in the paper.”

Ms. McCorvey said she was told that legalizing abortion would end back-alley abortions and “probably” put a stop to rape and incest. “They (the lawyers) had a hidden agenda,” she said. “They told me that they only wanted to legalize abortion in the state of Texas, but what they actually wanted to do was what they did—legalize abortion across the land.”

In 1994, after more than two decades of guilt-induced drug binges and various jobs at abortion clinics, Ms. McCorvey said she began to change her mind about the abortion industry, especially when Operation Rescue moved next door to her workplace, an abortion clinic in Texas.

She became disillusioned with her job admitting women for first- and second-trimester abortions.

When she started counseling women that they were under no obligation to go through with their abortions, reducing the weekend numbers, she was fired, Ms. McCorvey said.

Her funeral was to be private, family members said.—CNS