XPost: talk.abortion, soc.men, alt.mens-rights   
   XPost: rec.arts.tv   
   From: left.wing.news@latimes.com   
      
   She was represented under a pseudonym in the Roe v Wade case, in   
   what ended up being a landmark and controversial Supreme Court   
   judgement in 1973.   
      
   Having turned to religion, McCorvey then said being part of the   
   decision to legalise abortion "was the biggest mistake of my   
   life".   
      
   She also unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn   
   Roe v Wade.   
      
   Her death, in a Texas care home, was confirmed to US media by a   
   journalist who had been working on a book on the case.   
      
   The ruling in January 1973 came after McCorvey, then a 25-year-   
   old single woman under the pseudonym "Jane Roe", challenged the   
   criminal abortion laws in Texas that ruled abortion was   
   unconstitutional, except in cases where the mother's life was in   
   danger.   
      
   Henry Wade was the Texas attorney general who defended the anti-   
   abortion law.   
      
   McCorvey first filed the case in 1969 - she was pregnant with   
   her third child and said she had been raped. But the case was   
   rejected and she was forced to give birth.   
      
   However, in 1973 her appeal made it to the US Supreme Court   
   where, by a vote of seven to two, the justices ruled that the   
   government lacked the power to prohibit abortions.   
      
   'Men making decisions about women's bodies'   
      
   Roe v Wade explained   
      
   The court's judgement was based on the decision that a woman's   
   right to terminate her pregnancy came under the freedom of   
   personal choice in family matters, as protected by the   
   Constitution.   
      
   McCorvey, having revealed her real name in the 1980s, went on to   
   clarify that she had not been raped as she had earlier claimed.   
   She had said so only to get permission for an abortion and speed   
   up her case.   
      
   By the time the legal challenges to her case were over, her   
   daughter was two and had been given away for adoption.   
      
   "I'm a simple woman with a ninth-grade education who wants women   
   not to be harassed or condemned," she told the New York Times in   
   1994, before she went on to denounce abortion. "It's no   
   glamorous thing to go through an abortion. I never had one, but   
   I've worked in three clinics and I know."   
      
   In an anti-abortion television advert broadcast earlier this   
   decade, she said: "Abortion has eliminated 50 million innocent   
   babies in the US alone since 1973. Abortion scars an untold   
   number of post-abortive mothers, fathers, and families too."   
      
   Before Roe v Wade, some states had already started to reform or   
   repeal laws on abortion, but women seeking a termination had to   
   do so illegally, at great expense, and often in unsafe   
   conditions.   
      
   One underground network run by women in Chicago said it   
   performed some 12,000 abortions in the late 1960s and early 70s,   
   before the court ruling was made.   
      
   In more recent years, the issue has proven to be among the most   
   divisive in US politics.   
      
   http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39016181   
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)