Much has been made of the fact that Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, became an antiabortion activist after converting to Christianity in 1995. But you don't hear as much about the other two plaintiffs in the case, Marsha and David King, known as Mary and John Doe in court documents.
In an interview with Women's eNews, Marsha King explains that she has firsthand experience of the perils of illegal abortion, having had two in Mexico after the contraception she and David were using failed. "We did not want to be parents at that time ... We tried to be very careful. We were very disciplined and very fecund." However, the court ruled that the Kings did not have standing in the case because, technically, they were only attempting to secure their rights for a "future need" -- unlike McCorvey, who was pregnant when Roe began. (She gave that child up for adoption.)
Also unlike McCorvey, King still believes that the Roe decision was a positive and necessary step forward for American women. Now the mother of two grown daughters, she decided to speak out recently, after Operation Save America, an anti-choice group McCorvey works with, held a protest in her hometown of Atlanta. "Would I do it again? Absolutely," she said of her involvement in the landmark case. "I worry that the right will be taken away. The people who are affected the most are the ones least able to defend it; the others think that it will always be there."
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