Salon.com > Jane Roe http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The ever-changing ideologies of Jane Roe http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/the_ever_changing_ideologies_of_jane_roe/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/the_ever_changing_ideologies_of_jane_roe/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:29:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13160756 Four decades ago, she was known as Jane Roe. She was already a mother, and when she became pregnant again she fought, all the way to the Supreme Court, for the right to terminate. And though that eventual decision came too late for her to act upon it, it changed reproductive freedom in this country -- and has been hotly fought over ever since. But Norma McCorvey has long made it clear she isn't the patron saint of abortion. And in a new profile in Vanity Fair to mark the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, she emerges as the most contradictory of figures, a woman who has built a career around disavowing her role in a history-making case.

McCorvey wasn't interviewed for Joshua Prager's profile. "I almost forgot i have a one thousand dollar fee," she texted him when he requested to speak to her. And when he declined to pay, she replied, "Then we wont speak." Why should she, when being Jane Roe has been her job? It's a job that has exasperated pro-choice activists and been exploited by the far right. Just last summer, "legitimate rape" expert Todd Akin erroneously cited her example as "false claims like those made in Roe v. Wade."

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