Liberty and Sexuality by David J. Garrow

Author:David J. Garrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504015554
Publisher: Open Road Media

CHAPTER NINE

Liberty and Sexuality Since Roe v. Wade

Norma McCorvey had heard nothing at all about Roe v. Wade for many months when she suddenly saw the front-page newspaper article reporting the Supreme Court’s decision. The unexpected death of former President Lyndon Johnson had taken priority as the day’s top news story both in Texas and across the nation, but the coverage of the Roe and Doe rulings was almost equally substantial. “I was happy, sad and mad,” Norma later explained, for “in a way I felt cheated because I didn’t benefit” from the long-awaited victory. Since the fall of 1970, just a few months after Henry McCluskey had arranged for the adoption of her newborn “Roe” baby, Norma had been living with Connie Gonzales, whom she had first met as a coworker at a grocery store, but only now, for the first time, did Norma tell Connie that she was that “Jane Roe” in the newspaper story about the Supreme Court.

Within a day both Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee telephoned Norma. Sarah was surprised at the breadth of the Court’s decision, and slightly astonished that Warren Burger had joined the majority, but she told reporters that she was “very glad for the women of Texas.” Linda was likewise startled by the 7 to 2 margin, and while she found the outcome “terribly satisfying” both “as a woman and as a lawyer,” she explained in long interview with the Southern Baptist Convention’s press service that “From my personal perspective as a Christian, it would tear me up to have to make a decision on abortion except in the very early stages, and I would have to have a compelling reason even then.” Linda pointed out that “Legal personhood is separate entirely from a moral or religious view of personhood,” but she emphasized that “the state should be neutral on abortion because it should never appear either to sanction an abortion or to interfere improperly with a doctor-patient relationship.” In part through her mother, who worked at the Baptists’ Christian Education Commission, Linda also introduced Robert O’Brien, the Baptist Press correspondent, to her heretofore anonymous client, and just four days after the Supreme Court decision was announced, the Baptist news service distributed a story identifying “Jane Roe” as twenty-five-year-old Norma McCorvey, a “part-time delivery girl.” O’Brien quoted Norma as saying that “It’s great to know that other women will not have to go through what I did,” and while the Dallas Morning News picked up O’Brien’s scoop and announced that “Abortion Reformer Sheds ‘Jane Roe,’” the paper nonetheless gave the story no greater prominence than placement on page thirty. Three full days passed before Dallas’s other daily paper took note of the news, and aside from one or two southern dailies that also picked up on the Baptist Press story, Norma McCorvey’s identity receded into full anonymity for most of the ensuing decade.1

Marsha and David King had moved away from Dallas even before the Supreme Court reargument three months earlier. David had

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