Jane and Norma
America's Forgotten Heroes
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Lance Corporal José Gutiérrez, a name few had ever heard but who had a uniquely American story: a Guatemalan immigrant who died an American hero. As we near America’s 250th Anniversary, I wanted to share another story I originally wrote in 2024 about an American whose real name few have ever heard, but who lived a life that, for better and worse, could only have ever happened in the United States.
Her name was Norma McCorvey.
She worked as a waitress in South Dallas and like a lot of waitresses, she lived paycheck to paycheck. Walking the same vinyl floors, writing down the same orders, repeating the same lines, again and again. “Another cup of coffee?” “Will that be all?” “Just checking in.” The monotony came with a paycheck and little else. Life itself offered little for Norma. She had been raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. Her father had been a television repairman and was hardly ever around. Then, when Norma was 13, he was gone for good. Her mother drank too much and beat her, admitting later in blunt terms, “I beat the fuck out of her.”
Even outside the home, life hadn’t been easy. The same year her mother left, Norma and a friend checked into a motel, and into a room where the friend later claimed Norma tried “inappropriate things” with her. That landed Norma in the Juvenile Court of Dallas and the designation as a “delinquent child.” She was sent to a Catholic boarding school and later another state-run boarding school for girls. After the ninth grade, she dropped out of school all together.
When she was 15, Norma was working as a roller girl at a drive-up burger stand when a man named Woody pulled up in a black Ford. Woody was 21, a sheet metal worker, and within a year he and Norma were married, and she was pregnant. Things soon went south. Woody was violent too and the couple soon divorced, with Norma giving up custody of their child, Melissa, to her mother soon after giving birth. After giving up the child, Norma drank heavily and used drugs—and worked at a gay bar in Dallas called the White Carriage. See, Norma was a lesbian. And this was Texas in the late 1960s. There were strings of women, hundreds of them Norma said, and the occasional male partner too. To get by, she didn’t just waitress and bartend, she dealt drugs and worked for a time as a prostitute. Money was tight, it had always been tight, and she did what she had to do. In 1967, Norma turned 19 and got pregnant again. This time, she put the baby up for adoption.
America was changing. In 1964—after decades of upheaval—the first meaningful piece of Civil Rights legislation in a century came into effect when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The next year, he signed the Voting Rights Act. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that married couples had the right to use contraceptives because of their right to privacy and freedom from government overreach. Two years later in 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that any laws that banned interracial marriage were unconstitutional. That summer was the Summer of Love—women’s liberation and the Gay Rights movement were leading the charge toward a more equitable future. Kids in San Francisco were turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.
Norma was still bartending in Dallas.
Then, in 1969, she turned 22 and became pregnant for a third time. She went to see her doctor, Dr. Richard Lane. But for this visit, something new stirred inside Norma. Walking into the office, she found the same chilling stillness any patient finds in an OBGYN room. A stillness that stretches beyond the confines of sterility. Here, the patient knows, life lives on the edge. Here, the patient is reminded of life’s fragility—of our own miracle of being. And here, a woman knows she is beholden only to her own body. Her own body and—as Norma knew—the law of man.
This time, Norma told Dr. Lane, she didn’t want to have the baby at all. She wanted an abortion. Abortion, practiced for centuries, had long been the enemy in the increasingly Christian United States. In 1821, Connecticut became the first state to ban abortion. By 1880, it was illegal in every state and became an underground and unsafe practice. Women risked their own lives to gain greater control of their own futures. In 1930 alone, it was estimated that 2,700 women died in America from unsafe abortions. As the decades went on, and advocacy for causes like Civil Rights and Gay Rights grew, so did the calls for legal and safe abortions. In 1966, nine San Francisco doctors were sued for performing abortions on women who had been exposed to rubella, which is known to cause birth defects. Their story led to California eventually amending its ban on abortion by allowing doctors and hospital committees to decide on a case-by-case basis. Soon, the abortion cause was national and by the time Norma met with Dr. Lane in September 1969, there were six states where a woman could in some cases legally get an abortion: Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, Oregon, and Washington. But Norma couldn’t afford a flight anywhere. And, even when she found an unlicensed doctor willing to perform an abortion in Texas, she couldn’t afford his $500 fee.
Seeking a solution for Norma, Dr. Lane put her in contact with a lawyer, Henry McCluskey. Lane and McCluskey had worked together before and helped secure adoptions for women with unwanted pregnancies. But Norma was adamant—she had gone down that road twice now and simply wanted an abortion. She wanted control. But that wasn’t something the state of Texas was willing to offer her. Instead, McCluskey put Norma in contact with two other lawyers, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. The three of them met at a pizza parlor in Dallas. Coffee and Weddington were hard chargers, determined to make it in a legal world that was then and still is dominated by men. For years, they had been looking for a way to challenge Texas’ abortion statutes. In Norma, they saw their path.
But Norma didn’t want any special treatment. She didn’t want to be an advocate for a cause or a voice for a movement. She just wanted control and the freedom to make her own decisions. She just wanted an abortion. And, she thought, by pursuing legal action—by listening to these lawyers—it would provide her the best chance. A few weeks after meeting, they called her back into the office and asked if she would be the plaintiff on a case challenging the existing law. And they asked if she would do so anonymously. She agreed. In a moment, Norma became Jane Roe.
The case went to trial and on June 17, 1970, a decision had been made. Coffee and Weddington had won. But Norma hadn’t—Jane had. Because two weeks prior to the Texas court decision—and nearly two and half years before the case snaked its way up the legal system and to the Supreme Court—on June 2, 1970, Norma’s baby was born at Dallas Osteopathic Hospital. McCluskey arranged the adoption, just as had been planned before the trial ever happened. Three days after the birth, a couple named Ruth and Billy Thorton drove their new daughter, Shelley Lynn, home.
After Shelley Lynn’s birth, Norma returned to work, this time as a house cleaner, a job she and her partner Connie Gonzalez made into a business. On January 23, 1973, she came home and picked up the newspaper. There were two big stories: Lyndon Johnson was dead and Roe v. Wade had been decided—the abortion she wanted but couldn’t get was now legal. Norma cried. But these weren’t tears of joy. Her story didn’t have a happy ending. She didn’t want to be a sacrifice—she wanted an abortion. She eventually drank herself to sleep that night. The next morning, she was up early and back to work washing dishes and scrubbing toilets.
She’s remembered as Jane Roe. But her name was Norma McCorvey.
Sources:
Joshua Praeger. The Family Roe. 2021.
https://digitalcommons.slc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=womenshistory_etd
https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/101917a-wrptimeline_0.pdf
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2013/2/the-accidental-activist
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/how-the-real-jane-roe-shaped-the-abortion-wars
Thank you for this. I never knew the story behind the decision.
I am 62 years old, well read & educated…and I’d never heard this story. Prime example as to why yours is my only Substack subscription (until I FINALLY have mine up & running)