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What's the truth about Norma McCorvey, the woman who legalised abortion in America - then changed her mind?

A change of heart: Norma McCorvey with anti-abortion demonstrators in Washington -  Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP2009
A change of heart: Norma McCorvey with anti-abortion demonstrators in Washington - Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP2009

Within the divisive abortion debates that rage on across the US, it seems an almost inconceivable switch; a pro-choice advocate changes their mind to become a professional pro-lifer. But that was exactly the ideological transition made by Norma McCorvey in 1995, when she shocked the US with her decision to come out as against abortion.

For in 1973, Norma McCorvey was better known as 25-year-old 'Jane Roe' - the woman at the epicentre of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalise abortion. The Roe vs Wade case went down in history after prompting an bitter cultural debate across America about the ethics of abortion. But after converting to evangelical Christianity in 1995, McCorvey - the woman who helped abortion become legal in the US - suddenly became an anti-abortion activist and fought for the rest of her life to overturn the law that bore her name.

Now, previously unseen footage in a new documentary - which airs in the US on Friday - reveals that McCorvey's decision to become a pro-lifer was not entirely her own. The film, AKA Jane Roe, will show a visibly unwell McCorvey, who died in 2017, admit that she only became an anti-abortion activist because she was paid by evangelical groups.

"This is my deathbed confession" she says. "I took their money and they took me out in front of their cameras and told me what to say. That's what I'd say."

It has pushed McCorvey's name back into the spotlight. So who is the woman behind the controversy? Here's what you need to know.

Where was she from?

McCorvey's childhood was troubled. She was born in Louisiana, before the family moved to Texas - the state that was to define the outcome of the rest of her life. Her grandmother was a prostitute and fortune teller, while her father left the family when McCorvey was just 13. She and her brother were raised by their mother Mary, a violent alcoholic.

A court case might have been the thing that shaped her life, but as a child McCorvey spent her life on the wrong side of the law. When she was 10, she robbed a till at a petrol station before running away with a friend to Oklahoma, where the pair stayed in a hotel room for two days before being returned by police. She was sent to a state correctional school, where she was rumoured to have undergone several realisations against the Jehovah faith she had been raised in; primarily that sex was something to be enjoyed.

What ensued was years of turmoil about her sexuality and the prospect of motherhood. By the age of 19, McCorvey had two children. She gave the first, Melissa, to her mother and put the second up for adoption. McCorvery had come out as bisexual, but by the age of 21 found herself pregnant again - and this time, determined not to see it through.

How did she become the face of Roe vs Wade?

Alone, impoverished and carrying a third unwanted child, McCorvey had few options. Originally, she claimed she had been raped in order to try and claim a legal abortion, as Texas law made exceptions in cases of rape and incest. Due to lack of evidence, her claim wasn’t upheld. An attempt to access an illegal abortion also failed.

For the first time in her life, McCorvey was to be forced to seek help from the law, rather than fighting against it. She contacted two lawyers, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were building a case against state laws that banned abortion. And as an uneducated women, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, and lacking the means to travel outside of Texas, McCorvey was their ideal plaintiff.

In a later interview with The New York Times, McCorvey made it clear that her involvement with the lawyers had not been because she wanted to legalise abortion - but that she herself wanted to have one: “I just wanted the privilege of a clean clinic to get the procedure done.”

Three years later, the Supreme Court sided with 'Jane Roe' in its 7-2 ruling that it was unconstitutional to make abortion illegal. It wasn’t until 1984 that McCorvey went public as the woman behind the landmark battle, and became a poster woman for abortion rights.

Tthe great irony of McCorvey's life is that, before the outcome of the Roe vs Wade was decided, she ended up having her third child. She would be associated with legalising a procedure that she was never able to have herself.

Norma McCorvey at a pro choice rally in 1989 -  Bob Riha Jr/ Archive Photos
Norma McCorvey at a pro choice rally in 1989 - Bob Riha Jr/ Archive Photos

Why did she change her mind?

Such a huge ideological leap seems almost seems inconceivable. But in 1995, McCorvey converted to evangelical Christianity after she befriended, Flip Benham, the director of the radical anti-abortion Christian group Operation Save America. A short time later, she underwent another religious conversion and became a Roman Catholic.

In the years that ensued, McCorvey became a vocal advocate against abortion rights. In 1998, she wrote a book, Won by Love, which detailed her conversion and anti abortion activism.

It was a shift tainted with sadness. Following her religious conversion, McCorvey ended the 22-year relationship she had shared with a woman called Connie Gonzalez as she now believed that homosexuality was wrong.

In 1998, McCorvey found herself back in court under radically different circumstances. This time, she was testifying against the case that was fought in her name only 25 years earlier. “I am dedicated,” she said, “to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name.”

How did she die?

McCorvey died at the age of 69 of heart failure. It was in the months leading up to her death that she made her final - and most confusing - confession yet, the one that appears in the new documentary. She was in support of women's reproductive rights, and her decision to become publicly pro-life was down to money paid by evangelical groups.

"If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that’s no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it choice,” she says in the film.

While we may never know what McCorvey's true ideological standpoint was, it's clear is that she left a remarkable legacy. Between 1973 and 2017, an estimated 50 million abortions have been legally undertaken in the US. In 2020, there will have been many more - despite recent efforts from individual states to end it.

Perhaps it was for these women that she made her final swerve. In the documentary, McCorvey recalls the phone call in which she learnt that Roe vs Wade had been successful and that abortion was now legal in the US: "It's for all the women who come after me" she said.

AKA Jane Roe airs on FX at 9pm on Friday