30 years later, wondering about Jane Roe’s alter ego

Abortion rights have been very much in the news this week. The

growth of embryonic research has offered new legal arguments to

abortion opponents.

Speculation on how new appointments might affect the balance of

the Supreme Court on this issue is also growing.

But mostly these matters have been framed in the 30th anniversary

Wednesday of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized a

woman’s right to choose. And that, in turn, set me to thinking that

30 years is also how long I’ve known Norma McCorvey, whose alter ego

was, and identity finally became, Jane Roe. It also set me to

wondering why she hasn’t appeared in any of the anniversary coverage.

I met Norma when I was sent to Dallas by a national magazine to

profile the two young women attorneys who argued her case all the way

to the Supreme Court. It quickly became clear to me that the story

couldn’t be done properly without meeting Jane Roe, who then insisted

on remaining anonymous.

It took a lot of doing, including a clandestine meeting in a bar

so she could check me out. But I passed inspection, and after I

agreed not to reveal her identity, I spent several days talking with

Norma and her partner, a dark-haired, outspoken woman named Connie

Gonzalez who was strongly protective of Norma and not given to small

talk.

Although she preserved her anonymity for 10 years, Norma kept in

touch with me by letter and phone. She broke her public silence in

1983 to work for the pro-choice cause. Since then, she has been

patronized, vilified and even shot at, driving her to periods of

depression, alcoholism and attempted suicide. She has also been the

subject of a major TV movie, sought after for public appearances, and

invited to hobnob with public figures -- on their terms.

As so often happens with the attempt to resolve sweeping public

issues, Norma was an unlikely catalyst. As she described them to me,

her formative years consisted largely of trying to avoid school --

where she felt she was put down -- and the violent, drunken arguments

at home. She dropped out of school at 16 after her parents divorced,

and when her stepfather told her to go to work, she left home with a

battered psyche that reflected the lack of love in her life.

She was working as a drive-in car hop when she met and quickly

married a man who took her to Los Angeles, then abandoned her when

she got pregnant. She came home to have her baby and was ordered out

of the house after she signed her daughter over to her mother.

She drifted from job to job, and was working as a ticket taker in

a transient carnival when she was raped. That’s what Norma told the

Dallas doctor from whom she requested an abortion, that’s what she

told the attorneys who argued her case -- and that’s what she told

me. I still have a graphic account of that rape on tape.

Problem was, it never happened. When she first told that story to

shore up her abortion request, she had no idea it would one day find

its way to the United States Supreme Court. When it did, she was

terrified of exposure.

So she protected her identity for more than a decade until, as she

told me, “I decided to pitch in and help the people on the front

lines taking all this heat for providing a perfectly legal service to

women. I lied because that’s what women in the 1960s had to do in

order to get an abortion.”

That’s when a group of pro-choice activists took Norma in hand and

cast her as an unlikely icon in the escalating war between the anti-

and pro-abortion forces. But her sponsors treated her gingerly -- and

sometimes almost contemptuously -- uncertain whether she was an asset

or a liability.

She was taken on by an organization that booked speakers, but that

gig ended abruptly at the University of Pennsylvania when she was

asked to debate various aspects of abortion with two college

professors and deal with questions from students designed to

embarrass her.

She ended the evening -- and her speaking career -- by telling her

audience, “I had a ninth-grade education and would have given

anything in the world to have the knowledge your parents are paying

for you to get today.”

Norma drifted for a period that included almost a year in Orange

County before she returned to Dallas and Connie Gonzalez. That’s

where I found her when I was sent there to do a 20th anniversary

story.

We talked in their living room, where shotgun pellets had just

been removed and the wall repainted. But the front door was still

pocked and scarred from the pellets fired by three men in a pick-up

truck who have never been caught. They drove past the house twice,

sending a second volley through the front windows that probably would

have killed Norma had Connie not tackled her when she came running

out of the bedroom.

Norma told me on that visit: “It seemed like every time I tried to

better myself in life, I always failed. Nursing school, cosmetology

school, relationships. I’ve got a terrible temper, and I’ve never

been able to keep it down. The only successful thing in my life was

Roe vs. Wade -- and now it’s in deep trouble with the Supreme Court.”

She had a hopeful run with an organization called the Jane Roe

Women’s Center, but the last word I had about her came from news

stories that she had decided to throw in with an anti-abortion group

called Operation Rescue. She was quoted as saying: “They genuinely

love me. I felt like the pro-choice people only cared about what I

could do for them, not what they could do for me.”

Which was probably true.

But I wonder if she’s forgotten that it was the anti-abortion

activists who frequently littered her front lawn with baby clothes

and vilified her as a murderer. Maybe that’s not important anymore,

because now they are offering her love -- the one commodity Norma has

always sought and been denied.

We’ll see. Meanwhile, I wish her well. Norma is one of those

accidental celebrities, totally ill-prepared to deal with the public

exposure she has received. But Norma is a survivor. So, I hope, is

the cause for which she served so long as a national icon.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.