[lbo-talk] "Jane Roe" files to overturn _Roe v. Wade_

[Shane Taylor]

"Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe of _Roe v. Wade_), in her conversion to
Operation Rescue's brand of holy rolling, should give us pause about
loading too much significance onto individuals whose personal
circumstances momentarily embody larger political concerns."

-- Adolph Reed Jr., "Martyrs and False Populists"

Request filed to overturn Roe v. Wade
06/17/2003

By TERRI LANGFORD / The Dallas Morning News 


The woman whose pseudonym became forever linked with legalizing abortion
in the United States more than 30 years ago went to federal court on
Tuesday to overturn her own case, the landmark decision known as Roe v.
Wade. 

Lawyers for Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the Roe v.
Wade case, filed a motion asking the federal judiciary in Dallas to hold
a hearing on the matter. 

“I feel good about myself. I really do. I feel like the weight of the
world has been lifted from my shoulders,” Ms. McCorvey said at a downtown
Dallas news conference. She was surrounded by about 50 women who had
abortions but now regretted doing so. Many cried as they held signs that
read “Abortion Hurts Women.” 

Allan Parker, chief executive officer for the San Antonio-based Texas
Justice Foundation, said the case was filed because too little was known
about the affect of abortion on women at the time the case came before
the highest court in the United States. 

As the plaintiff in the case, Mr. Parker said Ms. McCorvey had the right
to have the case re-opened. 

“We’re getting our babies back,” Ms. McCorvey told the crowd of
supporters, who cheered. 

Dallas is the city where Ms. McCorvey’s legal story began decades ago. 

In 1969, Ms. McCorvey’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against Dallas County
District Attorney Henry Wade. The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court
in 1973, when justices ruled that Ms. McCorvey and other women had the
right to "be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so
fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget
a child.' 

The decision came too late for Ms. McCorvey to have an abortion. She gave
birth to the child. 

If Ms. McCorvey’s motion for a hearing is granted, the proceedings could
open the door again to having the case eventually heard by the U.S.
Supreme Court. 

Norma McCorvey changed her mind about abortion in the decades since her
lawyers pursued her case, but her action on Tuesday marks the first time
she has try to reverse the case in court. 

Ms. McCorvey publicly aligned herself with abortion foes in 1995, at
about the time she baptized in a Garland swimming pool by anti-abortion
advocate Rev. Flip Benham. 

Legal scholars were confident that even if the case were reheard, it
would have little affect on the status of abortion in the United States. 

“The Roe framework has been changed and altered and in some ways not
reaffirmed as is, so we have much later precedent that guides a lot of
these decisions now,” said Joan Krause, associate director for academic
programs of the Health, Law and Policy Institute of the University of
Houston Law Center. 

Email tlangford at dallasnews.com 


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