Norma McCorvey, who died on Saturday, was unknown; as the Jane Roe in Roe v Wade, she became one of the most famous women in America, her name synonymous with abortion rights. When pro-choicers want to defend the abortion status quo, or pro-lifers want to overturn it, they’ll say it’s about Roe v. Wade.
She was the woman who sought to have the restrictions on US abortion law overturned. Or at least, she and two ambitious female attorneys did. When she was 21, pregnant with her third child, she sought an abortion in Texas. She was referred to Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were looking for pregnant women wanting abortions in order to change the abortion law. Jane Roe was the pseudonym they gave McCorvey to protect her identity.
The case was pretty academic, given that she gave birth to the child she was pregnant with during the three years of trials before it got to the Supreme Court.
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