Roe vs. Wade Woman - Paid to Oppose Abortion?

[lpetrich]

At least so claims a recent documentary about Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion decision that legalized abortion everywhere in the US.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Wow: Norma McCorvey (aka “Roe” of Roe v Wade) revealed on her deathbed that she was paid by right-wing operatives to flip her stance on reproductive rights.
So, like many right-wing operations, it turns out a huge part of the anti-choice movement was a scam the entire time." / Twitter
noting
Matt Brennan on Twitter: "Something of a bombshell: Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, switched sides on abortion in the '90s. In a new FX documentary filmed before her death in 2017, McCorvey says she was paid to do so. @MeredithBlake reports, for @latimes: https://t.co/LQ5iUG65HG" / Twitter
noting
Roe vs. Wade plaintiff was paid to turn on abortion: FX doc - Los Angeles Times

For opponents of abortion, NMC seemed like a great catch: a big supporter of abortion rights turned anti-abortion.

“I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That’s what I’d say,” she says in “AKA Jane Roe,” which premieres Friday on FX. “It was all an act. I did it well too. I am a good actress.”

In what she describes as a “deathbed confession,” a visibly ailing McCorvey restates her support for reproductive rights in colorful terms: “If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that’s no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it choice.”

... McCorvey recounted details of her difficult upbringing — marked by abuse, neglect and a stint in reform school — turbulent personal life, including a short-lived teenage marriage, and a decades-long relationship with girlfriend Connie Gonzalez.

“I thought she was extremely interesting and enigmatic. I liked that her life was full of these fascinating contradictions,” says Sweeney, who also interviewed figures on either side of the abortion issue who were close to McCorvey, including attorney Gloria Allred and Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister and former leader of Operation Rescue.

McCorvey comes across as funny, sharp and unfiltered, with a broad performative streak. She rattles off lines from “Macbeth” and jokes, “I’m a very glamorous person — I can’t help it, it’s a gift.”

NMC broke off with her longtime girlfriend when she became a convert to evangelical Xianity in 1995, homophobia and all.

“AKA Jane Roe” also shows how McCorvey was held at arm’s length by abortion rights proponents. After a decade of anonymity, McCorvey went public in the 1980s and began granting interviews, and was depicted in the Emmy-winning TV movie, “Roe vs. Wade,” starring Holly Hunter. But to the leaders of the abortion rights movement, the inconsistencies in her story — for a time McCorvey claimed she had gotten pregnant as the result of a rape, then said she had been lying — and lack of polish made her a less-than-ideal poster girl for the cause.

 

[lpetrich]

Tracing the Life of Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, and Why She’d Favor an Abortion Ban | Vanity Fair - 2013 Jan 18 - "The Accidental Activist" - "She appeared to be the perfect plaintiff in a case that changed America’s political landscape: Roe v. Wade, decided by the Supreme Court 40 years ago this month. But Norma McCorvey, now 65, was never what she seemed: neither as the pregnant Texas woman who won fame as abortion-rights icon “Jane Roe,” nor as the pro-life activist she would become. Retracing her life through family, friends, and advisers, Joshua Prager investigates."

Norma McCorvey, now 65, has presented a version of her life in two autobiographies, I Am Roe (with Andy Meisler, 1994) and Won by Love (with Gary Thomas, 1997). In McCorvey’s telling, the story is a morality tale with a simple arc: An unwanted pregnancy. A lawsuit. Pro-choice. Born-again. Pro-life. Peace. The truth is sadder and less tidy. And with the help of a cache of documents retrieved two years ago from the clutter of a Texas home she had abandoned, as well as interviews with people once close to her, the story can be more accurately told.

Young Norma McCorvey had not wanted to further a cause; she had simply wanted an abortion and could not get one in Texas. Even after she became a plaintiff, plucked from obscurity through little agency of her own, she never did get that abortion. McCorvey thus became, ironically, a symbol of the right to a procedure that she herself never underwent. And in the decades since the Roe decision divided the country, the issue of abortion divided McCorvey too. She started out staunchly pro-choice. She is now just as staunchly pro-life.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Jane Roe Deathbed Conversion Confession

Not sure where to put this (so mods feel free to move), but here's a bit of quelle surprise. From Jane Roe’s Deathbed Confession: Anti-Abortion Conversion ‘All an Act’ Paid for by the Christian Right (Daily Beast, so grain of salt):

In its final 20 minutes, the documentary film AKA Jane Roe delivers quite the blow to conservatives who have weaponized the story of Jane Roe herself—real name, Norma McCorvey—to argue that people with uteruses should have to carry any and all pregnancies to term.

McCorvey, who died in 2017, became Jane Roe when, as a young homeless woman, she was unable to get a legal or safe abortion in the state of Texas. Her willingness to lend her experience to the legal case for abortion led to the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortions in all 50 states (though red states do all they can to get around this; recently, several have even used the COVID-19 pandemic to make abortions functionally impossible to procure). But conservatives had a field day in the mid '90s when the assertive, media-savvy pro-choice advocate and activist McCorvey became an anti-abortion born-again ex-gay Christian with the help of leaders of the evangelical Christian right, Reverend Flip Benham (of the infamous Operation Rescue) and Reverend Rob Schenck. A conservative film, Roe v. Wade, starring Jon Voight and Stacey Dash, will dramatize McCorvey’s “conversion.”

But those filmmakers, and the rest of the pro-life evangelical community, have another curveball coming. In the final third of director Nick Sweeney’s 79-minute documentary, featuring many end-of-life reflections from McCorvey—who grew up queer, poor, and was sexually abused by a family member her mother sent her to live with after leaving reform school—the former Jane Roe admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was “all an act.”

“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.” “Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. “Well,” says McCorvey, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.

Of further note:

Reverend Schenck, the much more reasonable of the two evangelical leaders featured in the film, also watches the confession and is taken aback. But he’s not surprised, and easily corroborates, saying, “I had never heard her say anything like this… But I knew what we were doing. And there were times when I was sure she knew. And I wondered, Is she playing us? What I didn’t have the guts to say was, because I know damn well we’re playing her.” Reverend Schenck admits that McCorvey was “a target,” a “needy” person in need of love and protection, and that “as clergy,” people like Schenck and Benham were “used to those personalities” and thus easily able to exploit her weaknesses. He also confirms that she was “coached on what to say” in her anti-abortion speeches. Benham denies McCorvey was paid; Schenck insists she was, saying that “at a few points, she was actually on the payroll, as it were.” AKA Jane Roe finds documents disclosing at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the anti-abortion movement to McCorvey.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You may want to merge a similar thread I started into this one.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You beat me to it.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Reuters: Plaintiff in Roe v. Wade U.S. abortion case says she was paid to switch sides

If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that’s no skin off my ass.

The jig is up.

Well that oughta about cover it.

 

[Lion IRC]

So she was a liar?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So she was a liar?

Just like all the others.

 

[Playball40]

As were the so-called "Christians".

So she was a liar?

 

[Lion IRC]

I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”

LOL
We need more abortion-on-demand feminists/activists faking it as pro-lifers.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”

LOL
We need more abortion-on-demand feminists/activists faking it as pro-lifers.

Yeah, so how many orphans have you adopted?

 

[Lion IRC]

What, what, what?
Fake concern for welfare of children?

The multi-million dollar abortion industry makes its living killing babies.

 

[Bronzeage]

What, what, what?
Fake concern for welfare of children?

The multi-million dollar abortion industry makes its living killing babies.

Having paid for abortions and loaned money for abortions, I'm pretty sure no one is getting rich performing abortions.

It's an interesting exercise in free market economics. In the US, the government is not allowed to fund abortions and most insurance companies will not pay for elective abortions. This means a clinic has to price it's services at a rate that the average working woman can afford. The key word here is "afford". The overwhelming reason for an abortion is economic. A woman believes she cannot afford to have and care for a baby. A baby may disrupt future plans, such as graduating from high school or college. It's a rational decision based on economic reasoning.

If the anti-abortion/prolife crowd really wanted to reduce the number of abortions, they would work to improve the economic outlook of women in general. Instead of making abortions more difficult and expensive, make them less needed. This means better healthcare, including birth control.

In the past few weeks, we've seen our conservative community more than happy to trade lives for better economic well being. That is no different than the woman who has an abortion because she fears losing her job because of the pregnancy,

 

[Patooka]

I've asked this before but never got an answer; what are pro-lifer's stance on fertility clinics? You know, those institutions that destroy more fertilized embryos than abortion clinics ever could by a significant margin.

 

[Bronzeage]

I've asked this before but never got an answer; what are pro-lifer's stance on fertility clinics? You know, those institutions that destroy more fertilized embryos than abortion clinics ever could by a significant margin.

Now, there's someone making a lot of money off unborn children.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

What, what, what?

How many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted?

 

[Tigers!]

What, what, what?

How many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted?

What is the link between orphans and abortions?
Last time I looked orphans were alive but sadly abortions kills the unborn.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What, what, what?

How many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted?

What is the link between orphans and abortions?
.

forcing a woman who cannot support a child to go full term likely adds a child to foster care and orphanages. But the typical evangelistic politicsl concern for children fades at the bright end of the birth canal. So, if thry're fighting abortion and crying about the poor children, what steps have they taken for the support of children in orphanages....? How deep is this concern, whst skin do they have in the game?

 

[Jarhyn]

I'm am adopted. I was a ward of the state following "The Mother"'s absolutely abusive inability to properly care for me and my siblings.

To this day, I believe we should have been aborted rather than making THAT happen. We weren't aborted. We should have been. I should have been aborted.

As a rational being, I acknowledge that beings have a right to not exist if that existence doesn't at least meat a certain bar of reasonable parental care.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

What, what, what?

How many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted, how many orphans have you adopted?

What is the link between orphans and abortions?

You mean, beside the fact that if you advocate to use government power to force someone you don't know to give birth then you are axiomatically arguing that it is the government's (and therefore the taxpayer's) absolute duty to care for those it exerted power upon, without question and for as long as it is necessary to care for them? Start here: The Prague Study.

Last time I looked orphans were alive but sadly abortions kills the unborn.

You assume that never having been born is somehow worse than being unwanted yet forced to be born. Since the only testimony possible in regard to that question is from the lives of those who were unwanted, yet forced to be born, only their words and experiences (and actions) can be applied.

No one can "advocate" on behalf of something that hasn't been born and cannot provide subjective input, so any appeal to advocacy of the unborn is necessarily illegitimate. It could only ever be what the advocate believes--guesses--is the case and then only as it relates to their own perspective about their own lives, never about what could be from the unborn's perspective.

Again, for that perspective, then only the testimony of those whose mothers wanted to abort, but were otherwise forced to give birth can be applied.

And then it becomes a question of, if there are ANY negative consequences of being unwanted and yet forced to be born, then it can never be justified to force any woman to give birth who does not want to. Ever. Even if just ONE person who was forced to be born--when that birth was not wanted--was negatively impacted by being unwanted and forced to live, that alone serves to force us to require government power to not be utilized.

So no positive testimony from those who were unwanted, yet forced to be born can be applicable. While that's nice for them, governmental power is not preventative. It is established for redress for harms inflicted, not in celebration for no harms inflicted.

Iow, there are no laws that can physically prevent anyone from committing crimes. Those laws only serve to offer us a means to punish someone after they have committed a crime. The law against rape, for example, sadly does not in itself stop anyone from raping someone else. If it did, we'd have no rapes, but clearly that's not the case.

So, when someone rapes someone, THEN the laws that exist allow us to engage governmental power to put in motion the police, the district attorney, the judge and jury system and then the final punitive stage of sentencing and incarceration.

See how it all works? So if you want to argue to charge a woman who just had an abortion with murder, then you're free to do so, but your argument will fail. Short of that, however, governmental power cannot be justified in any other capacity--e.g., to physically prevent a mother from getting an abortion or a doctor from performing an abortion--because it has been abundantly established that such an abuse of power can result in undue harm being inflicted on both the mother and the forced birth child.

It would be identical to arguing that we use governmental power to torture two people for life just because a third person was once not harmed by the same process.