10/31/22, 9:22 AM Norma McCorvey -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Norma McCorvey
Norma McCorvey, née Norma Lea Nelson, also known as Jane Roe, (born September 22,
1947, Simmesport, Louisiana, U.S.—died February 18, 2017, Katy, Texas), American
activist who was the original plaintiff (anonymized as Jane Roe) in the landmark U.S.
Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade (1973), which made abortion legal throughout the United
States.

McCorvey grew up in Texas, the daughter of a single alcoholic mother. She got into trouble
frequently and at one point was sent to a reform school. She married and became pregnant at
16 but divorced before the child was born; she subsequently relinquished custody of the child
to her mother. In 1967 she gave up a second child for adoption immediately after giving
birth. When she became pregnant again in 1969, she wanted to have an abortion. In Texas at
the time, such a procedure was legal only if the mother’s life would be endangered by
carrying the pregnancy to term. McCorvey was referred to feminist lawyers Linda Coffee and
Sarah Weddington, who had been seeking just such a client to challenge the laws restricting
access to abortion.

McCorvey was hoping that she would quickly gain permission to receive an abortion, but she
was unsuccessful. Coffee and Weddington changed the case to a class-action suit, and, by the
time a ruling was made by a federal three-judge panel in June that the Texas law against
abortion was unconstitutional, McCorvey had given birth and again given up the infant for
adoption. The state of Texas appealed, and in 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that during the
first trimester of pregnancy a pregnant woman did have the right to have an abortion “free of
interference by the State.”

Though McCorvey identified herself shortly thereafter as the plaintiff Jane Roe, she remained
mostly out of the limelight for the next decade. In the early 1980s she began volunteering at
an abortion clinic and also began speaking out in favour of the right to choose, becoming
increasingly well known. In 1989 McCorvey was portrayed by the actress Holly Hunter in the
TV movie Roe vs. Wade, and that same year activist lawyer Gloria Allred took McCorvey
under her wing.

However, in 1995 McCorvey befriended Philip Benham, head of the aggressive pro-life
organization Operation Rescue, and she soon began campaigning against the right to
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10/31/22, 9:22 AM Norma McCorvey -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

abortion. In 1998 she converted to Roman Catholicism after coming under the influence of
Frank Pavone, who led the pro-life Priests for Life. But in the documentary AKA Jane Roe
(2020), a dying McCorvey claimed that she had been paid by anti-abortion groups to support
their cause.

McCorvey published two memoirs: I Am Roe (1994; with Andy Meisler) and Won by Love
(1997; with Gary Thomas).

Patricia Bauer The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Citation Information
Article Title:
Norma McCorvey
Website Name:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published:
18 September 2022
URL:
https://www.britannica.comhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Norma-McCorvey
Access Date:
October 31, 2022

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