Norma Leah McCorvey is best known by her pseudonym name Jane Roe. She was part of the landmark lawsuit Roe v. Wade in 1973. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws against abortion are unconstitutional. The court overturned individual state laws against abortion. That was then. Years later she changed her mind and became an advocate for the pro-life movement.
McCorvey claims she was a pawn of two ambitious lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who were looking for a plaintiff with whom they could challenge the Texas law prohibiting abortion. The case, which claimed McCorvey had been impregnated as a result of a rape, took three year to reach the high court. McCorvey gave birth to a baby girl while awaiting the ruling and signed her over for adoption. She later recanted the rape story that was the basis of Roe v. Wade.
Norma has written several books, including I Am Roe in 1994. In 1995 she had a religious conversion and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. It was at that point that she changed her mind about abortion.
In 2005, she petitioned the Supreme Court in McCorvey v. Hill to overturn the 1973 decision, arguing that the case should be heard again in light of evidence that the procedure harms women, but that petition was denied.
McCorvey was one of 27 people arrested during a protest of President Obama’s commencement address to the graduates of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana on Sunday. The decision to have Obama speak at the school on May 17, 2009 was met with some controversy because his opinions on abortion differ from those of the Catholic Church.
See more photos and video below from the University of Notre Dame protest today and Barack Obama‘s Speech.
More Notre Dame photos available here.