Something that most people don’t know, is that when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling regarding Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion nationally, it was actually rendering a decision on two separate cases. The second was a case out of Georgia known as Doe v. Bolton. The plaintiff, Mary Doe, whose real name was Sandra Cano, had a similar shitty background to Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe. Sandra had a severe learning disability and a medical condition which made part of her face droop. When she was seventeen, she was forced to marry a gas station attendant after he knocked her up, even though he was a convicted child molester who continually violated his probation. As a result of this little factoid, Sandra’s first three children were moved into foster care and Sandra had a mental breakdown, being institutionalized for a time before escaping. In 1969, pregnant with her fourth child, Sandra went to a lawyer named Margie Hames to see about getting a divorce. However, Hames, more interested in challenging Georgia’s abortion law, lied to Sandra and had her sign documents which she never read, which kicked off Doe v. Bolton. Hames then signed Sandra up for an abortion she didn’t want, leading to Sandra fleeing the state for six months in the mistaken belief that Hames could force her to kill her baby. Despite this, the case continued forward clear to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sandra didn’t fully understand her role in the case until her cause was taken up by anti-abortion advocates a year after the verdict. Decidedly anti-abortion, this led to her becoming a loud advocate for the appeal of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, a call that gained strength in the 1980’s with the growth of the Christian evangelical movement. This was decidedly not all that great for the pro-abortion movement, which responded by revealing to the world that Norma McCorvey was Jane Roe. Though she was a little rough around the edges, by which I mean she reeked of booze and had a foul mouth, she was pro-abortion. Norma, who was not a big fan of working as a housekeeper, enjoyed her new celebrity status, hitting the interview and advocacy circuit, proudly telling people how her quest to get an abortion after getting raped had changed the world. Unfortunately, her story became much less popular in 1987 when she admitted in an interview that her pregnancy had not been the result of rape.
As a result of Norma’s less than truthful narrative, she drifted back into obscurity for a time. However, she missed the limelight, so in 1989 made up a story that an anti-abortion advocate fired a shotgun at the house she shared with her partner, Connie Gonzalez. This put her back in the pro-abortion camp’s good graces. Facing both a Supreme Court case trying to limit abortions and Sandra trying to overturn Doe v. Bolton on the grounds that she had been lied to, both of which ultimately failed, it was decided to once again overlook Norma’s alcoholism and instability. Norma was bigger than ever, hob knobbing with celebrities, giving political endorsements, creating a foundation, having a movie made about her, and writing an autobiography. However, nothing lasts forever, and by 1995, the money for interviews had largely dried up again and the pro-abortion community had mostly gone back to ignoring Norma, leaving her with little beyond a low paying job at a local abortion clinic. It was at this point that Norma switched sides, announcing she had become a born again Christian who was fervently against abortion.
Now this might seem a bit confusing, until you realize it was all about the money. As it turned out, the anti-abortion talk circuit was more lucrative, so Norma changed sides, not only switching her stance on abortion, but also announcing that she was no longer a lesbian and that Connie, her partner of over twenty years, was now just a platonic friend and roommate. Norma fully transformed herself into an anti-abortion advocate, writing a new autobiography to counter her first version, starring in an anti-abortion movie, and even getting arrested at anti-abortion protests. However, though she helped raised millions of dollars for the cause, she received only a pittance in return, at one point even asking supporters to send her money so she and Connie could buy food. Connie remained in the picture until 2004, when Norma left her after she suffered a stroke. Norma died in 2017 at the age of 69. On her deathbed she admitted in her interview that her anti-abortion activism had been all an act which she did because doing it made money. As for Sandra, she attempted to get Doe v. Bolton overturned again in 2000 and 2006, failing again both times. Her claim of her lawyer committing fraud never legally recognized, she died in 2014 at the age of 67.
Even after death, both Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano are claimed to be both heroes and villains by both sides of the abortion debate. In the end, neither women was really either of these things. Rather, they were just two women of little means who got swept up into something far bigger than themselves, one spending the rest of her life trying to escape it and the other trying to take advantage of it. This isn’t a story meant to shed light on the ethics of allowing or banning abortions. This is a story of meant to highlight that history is a messy thing, the examination of which leaves little to nothing pure or unscathed.