Taken Advantage Of
But the two women they used as pawns are now doing something explosive — trying to take their cases back to the Court to have them overturned.
And according to Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, there's nothing the pro-abortionists can do about it. Rule 60 states that “Upon such terms as are just, a motion can be made by a party and the judgment will be set aside.” Basically, the plaintiffs say they know things now that they didn't know before, such as the fact that Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, were based upon lies, the fact of post-abortion trauma suffered by millions of women and the well-documented link between abortion and breast cancer.
Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, and Sandra Cano, the Mary Doe of Doe v. Bolton, are now pro-life Christians. While McCorvey's case was about abortion, even though she lied to her lawyers, Cano's was not remotely associated with the gruesome procedure.
In 1970 Cano was a homeless mother of three children who had been taken away. Cano approached the local legal-aid office seeking custody of her children and a divorce from her husband. What she received was something she never requested: the legal right to abort her child.
Cano admits she was young, uneducated and naïve. “I never wanted an abortion. I just wanted my children back,” she says.
Her legal-aid attorney, Margie Pitts Hames, however, filed the case under false pretenses. Cano says that either Hames forged her signature on the affidavit, or she slipped it in among other papers Cano was told to sign for her divorce. Cano never saw the affidavit that was filed with the Supreme Court, but she says unequivocally, “The facts stated in the affidavit in Doe v. Bolton are not true.”
“Before my court date, I was instructed not to say anything and just be there,” Cano says. “This is the only time I ever made an appearance in court before the Doe decision — and I never spoke a word.”
The deception went further. Cano says that a TV interview was basically faked. “They set up the cameras facing my back, and then Margie did all the talking like she was me. It wasn't even my voice.”
Years later, when Cano tried to have her court records unsealed, she was fought by, of all people, her former attorney, Hames. “At first I couldn't understand why; she knew it was me. But now I understand.”
The affidavit said that she had applied for an abortion, had been turned down and had therefore sued the state of Georgia. “According to the records, I had applied for an abortion through a panel of nine doctors and nurses at [state-funded] Grady Memorial Hospital,” she says. “This is a lie. I contacted the hospital and tried to get my records. At first they said they were there, but when my attorney sent for them, the records disappeared, if they ever really existed.”
In fact, Cano was against abortion. When told she had “won” her court case, Cano says, “It was like a whole bunch of bricks were put on my shoulders, and it has been that way ever since. I never wanted an abortion. Regardless of the worst state of misery or depression, it would never cross my mind to take the life of a child.”
Another Pawn
In 1969 Norma McCorvey was a self described hippie and often unhappy. “I'd been on the streets since I was 9 or 10,” she says. “I often told my mother, 'I wish I could find the person who invented life. I'd slap 'em.'”
She was pregnant for the third time — the second time out of wedlock — and looked into getting an abortion. The illegal abortion clinic she was referred to was, in the mildest of terms, disgusting.
“There was dried blood all over the floor and on the side of this makeshift table,” McCorvey says. “There was a grip hanging from the ceiling. I guess that's what the girls would hold on to. This was before they could give them anesthesia. I saw the conditions of the place and went outside to get ill.”
Eventually, McCorvey was recommended to two young women fresh out of law school, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. She lied to them, saying she had been gang-raped.
“They said, 'Well, you know, women have the right to vote,'” McCorvey says. “I'm sitting there and thinking, Well, I may live part time in the streets and part time at my dad's, but I'm not stupid, okay? They were treating me like I was stupid, and I resented that.
“Then they said, 'Well, Norma, don't you think women should have rights to their own reproductive organs?' And I'm going, like, yeah. I wasn't real sure what they were talking about, but then you have to understand that I stayed stoned a lot.”
They told McCorvey that the case was only about Texas' abortion laws. (Ironically, because the case dragged out in the courts, McCorvey never got an abortion. She gave up the baby for adoption.) When she found out that the case had gone all the way to the Supreme Court and resulted in legalizing abortion in all 50 states, she was stunned.
“I sat in the dining room that night and just kept rereading the newspaper story and drinking — drinking and thinking,” she says. “It made me sad to know that my name, even though it was a pseudonym, would always be connected to the death of children.”
McCorvey got a straight razor and started cutting her wrists a little at a time. “That didn't work, so I went out and I got as many pills as I could. I took all of them and chased it with a quart of Johnny Walker, thinking I would die, and I wouldn't ever have to talk to Sarah Weddington or Linda Coffee again. But that was not God's plan for me.”
Silent No More
Both women now are in a position to take away some of that shame, particularly since McCorvey became a Christian in the mid-1990s and Cano two years ago. With the help of the Texas Justice Foundation, they are asking the Supreme Court to rehear their cases. (The Foundation is also representing Donna Santa Marie, a 16-year-old girl whose parents forced her to get an abortion — after her father allegedly punched her in the stomach to try to induce a miscarriage.)
Allan Parker, president of the Foundation, says, “They were willing to listen to Norma the first time; they ought to be willing to listen to her again.”
He is launching a three-phased strategy called Operation Outcry: Silent No More.
“We have filed a Friend of the Court brief on behalf of Norma and Sandra, and thousands of women who have signed our Friend of the Court form, saying they don't agree with Roe v. Wade.”
In Parker's second phase of litigation, he has sued the Texas Department of Health for not adequately protecting women's health as it relates to abortion. “While this suit can't overturn Roe v. Wade, we want women to be told, 'This is a human life that you're taking. You still have the choice under Roe, but you may suffer severe psychological consequences.'”
The third phase of Operation Outcry will be filing the motion to reopen Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, based on the fact that false testimonies were used in both. “I believe that the Supreme Court will take and hear the case,” Parker says. “It's a unique, historic opportunity in America where two people who won landmark Supreme Court decisions want to go back.”
(This article, which originally appeared in Focus on the Family Magazine, reprinted courtesy of the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
