With the US Supreme Court in a 6:3 ruling overturning the 1973 decision Roe v Wade on the issue of abortion, the main petitioner’s affidavit, which was filed in 2003, states that she got involved in the case without fully understanding its ramifications.
Norma McCorvey (the main petitioner) had filed an affidavit in a district court in Texas in 2003 which stated that, “When I met Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee [the lawyers] for the first time, they asked me– Don’t you think that abortion should be legal? Unsure, I responded that I did not know. In fact, I did not know what the term ‘abortion’ really meant.”
According to the affidavit, in September 1969, 21-year-old McCorvey became pregnant for the third time. She gave birth to a daughter in 1965 and, in 1967, she gave birth to a second child, whom she put up for adoption.
During her third pregnancy, McCorvey hoped to get an abortion. Her home state of Texas, on the other hand, had extremely restrictive abortion laws that allowed abortions only if carrying the foetus to term threatened the mother’s health.
Out of options, she turned to Dallas lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who were looking for the perfect plaintiff for their attempt to challenge Texas’ abortion laws.
In 1970, when Roe was five months pregnant, she signed an affidavit that she later claimed to have never read. This was the affidavit that was filed by her at the beginning of the case.
In her affidavit in 2003, she said, “In 1970, no one discussed abortion. The only thing I knew about the word was in the context of war movies. I didn’t even know the meaning of the word “abortion”. I signed the affidavit as I was naive. I didn’t know that during the case the life of a human being was terminated.”
Explaining how she was used by her lawyers as she was a street person, the affidavit states, “My totally powerless circumstances made it easy for them to use me. My real interest was not their concern.”
“I only met attorneys twice, and I had no personal contact. I have never testified in any court. The entire case was an abstraction. The facts about abortion were never heard,” the affidavit stated.
The lawsuit was filed in the district court in Texas in 1970 on behalf of McCorvey, under the pseudonym ‘Jane Roe’.
In June 1970, the court ruled in favour of Jane Roe and stated that the law against abortion in Texas violated the right to privacy but did not grant an injunction which would allow McCorvey to get an abortion.
Later that year, an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court, and in January 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that women in the United States had the right to choose whether or not to have abortions.
Now, the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v Wade in a case known as ‘Planned Parenthood v Casey,’ ruling that the Constitution makes no mention of abortion and that no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.