Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff known as “Jane Roe” in the US Supreme Court’s landmark Roe verses Wade ruling legalizing abortion, died on Saturday at the age of 69, a journalist close to McCorvey said.
McCorvey died on Saturday morning of heart failure at an assisted living home in Katy, Texas, Joshua Prager, a journalist who is writing a book about the ruling, said in an e-mail.
Her lawsuit, filed under the pseudonym, resulted in the court’s 1973 decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion.
Photo: AP
McCorvey lent her real name to supporters of the abortion-rights movement in the 1980s, but she did an about-face and later spoke out on behalf of anti-abortion campaigners.
In an article titled The Accidental Activist published in Vanity Fair magazine in February 2013, Prager wrote that McCorvey had never set out to further a cause when the Roe verses Wade lawsuit was filed in Dallas, Texas, in 1970.
Unwed and poor, she simply wanted an abortion after becoming pregnant for the third time and could not get one in the state.
Prager, who retraced her life through family, friends and advisers, said McCorvey told her doctor she did not want to bring the pregnancy to term, but she could not afford to travel to any of the six states where abortion was legal at the time: Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, Oregon and Washington.
McCorvey never actually had the procedure, Prager said.
Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who represented McCorvey when she supported abortion rights, said she was very proud to have been “Jane Roe.”
“Even though at the end of her life Norma thought women should be prevented from having an abortion and that abortion should be criminalized, her legacy will be Roe verses Wade, which has provided millions of women the legal right to choose abortion,” Allred said in a statement.
The 1973 Supreme Court ruling has for decades been the focus of a divisive political, legal and moral debate. It established that the US Constitution protects the right of a woman to have an abortion until the point of viability.
The court defined that point as when the fetus “has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb,” generally at about 24 weeks into pregnancy. The court also recognized a right to abortion after viability if necessary to protect the woman’s life or health.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not