Thornton was 18 when she. Her depression deepened. The reporters told Thornton they would reveal the identity of her biological mother at a restaurant in Seattles Space Needle. Having previously changed the channel if there was ever a mention of Roe on TV, she began, instead, in the first years of the new millennium, to listen. I had assumed, having never given the matter much thought, that the plaintiff who had won the legal right to have an abortion had in fact had one. Shelley Lynn Thornton, now 51, revealed herself as the so-called "Roe baby" in The Atlantic, which published an excerpt from an upcoming book about her, her birth mother, her half-sisters and the ways their lives unfolded after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. McCorvey's pregnancy led to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that found a constitutional right to abortion.. Shelley wanted no part of this. [2] Her birth mother first made contact with Thornton in 1989 when she was a teenager living near Seattle. He, too, had been adopted. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. And, she reflected, I guess I dont understand why its a government concern. It had upset her that the Enquirer had described her as pro-life, a term that connoted, in her mind, a bunch of religious fanatics going around and doing protests. But neither did she embrace the term pro-choice: Norma was pro-choice, and it seemed to Shelley that to have an abortion would render her no different than Norma. Shelley Lynn Thornton was two-and-a-half years old when the Roe v. Wade ruling was issued. She had occasional affairs with men and a brief marriage at age 16. Among pro-choice campaigners, the decision was hailed as a victory which would mean fewer women would become seriously - or even fatally - ill from abortions carried out by unqualified or unlicensed practitioners. Roe was 'Jane Roe,' a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a single mother pregnant for the third time, who wanted an abortion. Join Facebook to connect with Shelly Lynn and others you may know. To come out as the Roe baby would be to lose the life, steady and unremarkable, that she craved. The pair spoke on the phone in 1989, Norma McCorvey aka 'Jane Roe' (left) and her attorney Gloria Allred at the Supreme Court in 1989, the year she made her identity known. She sued the Dallas attorney general Henry Wade over a Texas law that made it a crime to terminate a pregnancy except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother's life was in danger. Shelley watched her mother issue second chances, then watched her father squander them. She went with her adoptive mother, Ruth. Shelley Lynn Thornton was two-and-a-half years old when the Roe v. Wade ruling was issued. Norma struggled to answer. She told them she didnt even know what that meant before Ruth was able to escort away from the media barrage. She died in 2017 without ever meeting Shelley in person. I dont really talk about that just because Im not going to let either side use me for their advantage, she said, adding that activists can find someone else.. She was born in June of 1970, a few months after Norma McCorvey filed Roe and a few years before the case was decided. Ruth was ecstatic. She added, "I believe that the decision to have an abortion is a private, medical choice that should be between a woman, her family, and her doctor. Enquirer stating that we have no intensions of [exploiting] you or your family. According to detailed notes taken by Ruth on conversations with her lawyer, who was in contact with various parties, Norma even denied giving consent to the Enquirer to search for her child. Doors slammed. At three days old, she was adopted by then-engaged Texas residents, Ruth Schmidt and Billy Thornton. I want her to experience this joythe good that it brings, she told me. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, GOP must confront abortion issue head-on to win swing voters in 2024: RNC chair, For a defender of democracy, Joe Biden sure undermines it a LOT, Samuel Alito claims he has pretty good idea who leaked Dobbs draft, says it made justices targets of assassination, Clueless Kathy Hochuls chaotic governance leaves New York to bleed. Her conception, in 1969, led to the lawsuit that ultimately produced, Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, All of Those Hysterical Women Were Right, Another Extremist Law That Americans Have to Live With, puts enforcement in the hands of private citizens, is scheduled to take up the question of abortion in its upcoming term, Norma was intubated and dying in a Texas hospital. She could make them still by eating. She knew only, she explained, that she wanted to one day find a partner who would stay with her always. The Supreme Court, now dominated by conservative justices, has also agreed to hear a case out of Mississippi concerning pre-viability bans on abortion. It was a game. She was ambivalent about adoption, too. In her book, she recounted stealing money at the age of 10 from the gas station where she worked afternoons and weekends and running away to Oklahoma City before being returned home by police. Each stop was one step further from Shelleys start in the world. But to remain anonymous would ensure, as her lawyer put it, that the race was on for whoever could get to Shelley first. Ruth felt for her daughter. She married at the age of 16, but separated shortly after while she was pregnant. She shook when she felt anxious, and she felt anxious, she said, about everything. She was soon suffering symptoms of depression toofeeling, she said, sleepy and sad. But she confided in no one, not her boyfriend and not her mother. Melissa Mills is one of them (pictured in 2021). "[2] When Thornton asked McCorvey about her biological father, McCorvey said little: she told Thornton that his first name was Bill and she described what he looked like. When Shelley was 5, she decided that her birth parents were most likely Elvis Presley and the actor Ann-Margret. We both like the same colors, we both like to do the same crafts and things like that. I want her to know, the Enquirer quoted Norma as saying, Ill never force myself upon her. And they said, Well, she is the woman who they used to do the Roe versus Wade case. ", To Thornton, pro-life represented a bunch of religious fanatics going around and doing protests.. Having begun work as a secretary at a law firm, she worried about the day when another someone would come calling and tell the worldagainst her willwho she was. And as I discovered while writing a book about Roe, the childs identity had been known to just one personan attorney in Dallas named Henry McCluskey. EXCLUSIVE Boss of Lib-Dem run South Cambridgeshire council which was first to introduce a four-day week is Martin Lewis reveals how to get a cheaper supermarket shop and FREE food. McCorvey had given up two baby daughters already and did not want to have a third child. Shelley took Hanfts card and told her that she would call. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. When the Roe case was decided, in 1973, the adoptive parents were oblivious of its connection to their daughter, now 2 and a half, a toddler partial to spaghetti and pork chops and Cheez Whiz casserole. Shelley and Doug moved up their wedding date. She opposed abortion. But in 2009, five years after Connie had a stroke, Norma left her. I am never going to be able to get away from this! The lawyer sent another strong letter. The National Right to Life Committee seized upon the story. ABC Thornton said prior to learning who her mother was,. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided that the constitutional right to privacy applied to abortion. The 1973 Supreme Court ruling made abortion a federally protected right. A Current Affair went away. She has three kids of her own and when she first became pregnant at 20, decided abortion was not 'part of who' she was. Shelley Lynn Thornton is seen here during an exclusive interview with ABC News. That was fine by her. Norma could be salty and fun, but she was also self-absorbed and dishonest, and she remained, until her death in 2017, at the age of 69, fundamentally unhappy. Ruth interjected, We dont believe in abortion. Hanft turned to Shelley. All I wanted to do, she said, was hang out with my friends, date cute boys, and go shopping for shoes. Now, suddenly, 10 days before her 19th birthday, she was the Roe baby. Sarah Weddington and a former classmate, Linda Coffee, brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a pregnant woman challenging a state law that largely banned abortions. And she began working to connect other women with the children they had relinquished. McCorvey, who revealed her identity shortly after the landmark case, died at 69 in 2017 after a complicated public life. The court heard arguments twice, and then waited until after Republican president Richard Nixon's re-election, in November 1972. She was also convicted in U.S. federal court for ten attacks at abortion clinics using arson or acid. Fitz, too, was expected to wear a white coat, but he wanted to be a writer, and in 1980, a decade out of college, he took a job at The National Enquirer. ", In the National Enquirer article, she was described as pro-life, which had bothered her because, as she told Prager, she had told the reporter "that she couldnt see herself having an abortion. I can do that too. Shelley had told her children that she was adopted, but she never told them from whom. The history of the Roe v Wade, which has proved controversial since it was made in 1973, dates back half a century. In the 1990s, she crossed the picket line and joined the anti-abortion side. Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, never had the abortion she was seeking. Thornton spent the first 19 years of her life without knowing McCorvey was her birth mother. ', Shelley Thorton was adopted as a baby and raised by Ruth and Billy Thornton, a married couple. Shelley Lynn Thornton has come forward after decades of secrecy to publicly identify herself as the "Roe baby" in the new book "The Family Roe: An American Story" by Joshua Prager, which will be released on Sept. 14 and was excerpted in The Atlantic on Thursday. Shelley Lynn Thornton is the baby of Roe vs. Wade plaintiff Norma McCorvey. Four more states are considered likely to quickly pass bans now that Roe is overturned. ABC News Growing up, Shelley Lynn Thornton said she had a nice childhood with parents who she knew adopted her and took good care of her. Toby Hanft knew what it was to let go of a child. Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, has come forward to reveal that she is the youngest daughter of McCorvey - the woman known as Jane Roe Thornton was the only child of her adopted parents Ruth Schmidt. I found her! From there, Hanft traced Shelleys path to a town in Washington State, not far from Seattle. I found in them a reference to the place and date of birth of the Roe baby, as well as to her gender. McCorvey began searching for Thornton in 1989, appearing on the "TODAY" show expressing her hope to find her third child. I visited Connie the following year, then returned a second time. Thornton released a statement speaking out against the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe case. I was just a pawn, and I wasnt going to let her do it, she said. It could well overturn Roe. (A woman had recently accused Norma of shortchanging her in a marijuana sale.) Now I understand that it has nothing to do with me, she told ABC News. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, She didn't deserve to meet me. McCorvey fell pregnant to a different man and gave the baby up for adoption in 1967. Oh my God! She graduated from Highline High School in 1988 . 'I can deal with that. Wow! Shelley was 15 when she noticed that her hands sometimes shook. McCorvey formed her own group, Roe No More Ministry, in 1997 and traveled around the U.S. speaking out against abortion. They kept asking me what side I was on, she recalled. There are 18 states that have near-total bans on their books, while four more have time-limit band and four others are likely to pass new bans if Roe v. Wade is overturned, Republican appointed-JusticesClarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett all voted to strike down Roe with Samuel Alito, Politico noted. But she did an about-face and later spoke out on behalf of anti-abortion campaignersafter befriending The Rev. Shelley gave birth to two daughters, in 1999 and 2000, and moved with her family to Tucson, where Doug had a new job. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. She began to Google Norma too. Unfortunately, she said, your birth mother is Jane Roe., That name Shelley recognized. She also confessed to lying when she said the pregnancy was the result of rape. But it would not kill the story. I am done, she told Doug. The two told ABC they had an instant bond. Now they talk nearly every day. She was waiting in a maroon van in a parking lot in Kent, Washington, where she knew Shelley lived, when she saw Shelley walk by. [3] Thornton met her biological half-sisters, McCorvey's two other daughters, in March 2013. She set everything else aside and worked in secrecy. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, "Identity of 'Roe baby' revealed after decades of secrecy", "Woman Whose Conception Sparked Roe v. Wade Case Breaks Silence: 'I'm Keeping a Secret but I Hate It', "Supreme Court abortion ruling live updates: Americans can get abortions in Canada: Trudeau", Supreme Court abortion ruling live updates: Americans can get abortions in Canada: Trudeau, Daughter of 'Jane Roe', the woman behind the landmark abortion case, comes to terms with her identity, Daughter of Jane Roe Has 'No Regrets' About Never Meeting Her Birth Mother After Landmark Abortion Case, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shelley_Lynn_Thornton&oldid=1143378474, This page was last edited on 7 March 2023, at 10:48. The person known as the Roe baby, referred to as such because of her birth mothers role in the landmark case protecting abortion, allowed herself to be publicly identified for the first time Thursday. ', McCorvey is pictured in 1998. She was first named as McCorvey's daughter last month in an article published in The Atlantic. All her life, Shelley had wanted to know the facts of her birth. She said she couldnt afford to travel to one of the handful of states where it would have been legal. Tracing leads, I found my way to her in early 2011. The case was filed in 1971 by Norma McCorvey, a 22-year-old living in Texaswho was unmarried and seeking a termination of her unwanted pregnancy. She told Shelley that they could meet in person. I was just a pawn, and I wasn't going to let her do it. Months after filing Roe, Norma met a woman named Connie Gonzales, almost 17 years her senior, and moved into her home. She is speaking out now,. In the interview, McCorvey refered to herself as 'the Big Fish' in the eyes of evangelical leaders who were eager to have her publicly switch sides and take up their cause. Having idly mused as a girl that her birth mother was a beautiful actor, she now knew that her birth mother was synonymous with abortion. One day in 1980, as Shelley remembered, it was just that he was no longer there. Shelley was 10.