Thorntons identity as the daughter of Jane Roe, or Norma McCorvey, was revealed last month in an article in the Atlantic. Billy Thornton was a lapsed Baptist from small-town Texastall and slim with tar-black hair and, as he put it, a deadbeat, thin, narrow mustache that had helped him buy alcohol since he was 15. Shelley was happy. Identity of 'Roe baby' revealed after decades of secrecy She began to cry. You aint never seen a happier woman, Billy recalled. Now that the leaked draft has been made final, the decision removes the federal right to abortion in America, leaving it up to elected officials in each state to decide whether or not women should have access to abortions. The news that Norma was seeking her child had angered some in the pro-life camp. Doug asked her to give up her career and stay at home. [disputed discuss], Many years later, after Thornton learned of her identity as the "Roe baby", she engaged in telephone conversations with McCorvey. He sent a letter to the Enquirer, demanding that the paper publish no identifying information about his client and that it cease contact with her. The Supreme Court handed down the watershed 7-2 decision that a woman's right to make her own medical decisions, including the choice to have an abortion, is protected under the 14th Amendment. Two years after the Enquirer article and as an unmarried 20-year-old, Thornton discovered she was pregnant. She was a producer for the tabloid TV show A Current Affair. However, abortion rights have been under threat in recent months as Republican-led states move to tighten rules - with some seeking to ban all abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant - andhave passed various abortion restrictions in defiance of the Roe precedent in recent years. In the event that she didnt already know that Norma McCorvey was her birth mother, a phone call could have upended her life. She simply continued on. Though she was still against abortion, she said she had reservations about the group's confrontational style. Ruth had grown up in a devoutly Lutheran home in Minnesota, one of nine children. I would go, Somebody has to know! Shelley told me. Her name is Shelley Lynn Thornton. Ruth turned to a lawyer, a friend of a friend. But it cautioned her again that cooperation was the safest option. Unfortunately, she said, your birth mother is Jane Roe., That name Shelley recognized. Theyd asked me if Id ever heard of her before and I said no, Thornton told ABC News Linsey Davis. The Atlantics excerpt comes as abortion bans dominate the news. Ruth spoke up: She wanted proof. The three met at a pizza parlor when Norma was eight weeks pregnant. In 1984, Billy got back in touch with Ruth and asked to see their daughter. 'Roe baby' Shelley Lynn Thornton says she's not going to let either The investigator handed Shelley a recent article about Norma in People magazine, and the reality sank in. The excerpt from the book, The Family Roe by Joshua Prager, explores how Thornton came to discover she was the so-called Roe baby, her fraught relationship with McCorvey and her frustration with the anti-abortion movement using her existence to bolster its cause. At some level, Norma seemed to understand Shelleys caution, her bitterness. She began to look hard and long at every girl in every park. She opened it to find a young woman who introduced herself as Audrey Lavin. 'She wasn't sorry, about giving me away or anything,' she said. 'They'd asked me if I'd ever heard of her before and I said no. Shelley Lynn Thornton (Baby Roe) Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) gave birth to Shelley Lynn Thornton in Dallas in 1970 - a year before the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade case was filed. 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. Shelley felt herself flush, and turned Lavin away. Instead, I called her adoptive mother, Ruth, who said that the family had learned about Norma. IE 11 is not supported. As a teenager, she said her biggest concerns were "shoes and boys." She had no reason to think much beyond herself, until reporters at the National Enquirer revealed her birth identity to her. "In his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that a 'pregnancy will come to term before the usual appellate process is complete,'" Prager writes. Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, has come forward to reveal that she is the youngest daughter of McCorvey - the woman known as Jane Roe. Thorntonwas two-and-a-half when Roe v Wade was decided. To be certain that he never came calling, Ruth moved with Shelley 2,000 miles northwest, to the city of Burien, outside Seattle, where Ruths sister lived with her husband. I could rock a pair of Jordache, she said. Norma had told her own story in two autobiographies, but she was an unreliable narrator. A decade earlier she had won a landmark abortion case - but the baby she wished to abort, Shelley Lynn Thornton, was born before the case concluded. The evidence was unassailable. She had to remind herself, she said, that knowing who you are biologically is not the same as knowing who you are as a person. She was the product of many influences, beginning with her adoptive mother, who had taught her to nurture her family. Hanft often relied on information not legally available: Social Security numbers, birth certificates. Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, the woman whose conception led to the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case, has revealed herself publicly for the first time as the "Roe baby." Sept. 9, 2021, 7:26 AM. It was something of an underworld, Jonah said. And unlike Norma, Shelley was actually raising her child. Finding the Roe baby would provide not only exposure but, as she saw it, a means to assail Roe in the most visceral way. Leave us alone. Again, she began to cry. Because of state legislation preventing abortions unless the mother's life is at risk, she was unable to undergo the procedure in a safe and legal environment. Thornton never met her birth mother, although they had several telephone conversations. She had casual affairs with men, and one brief marriage at age 16. Seeing double! She admitted before she died that she made the change in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Philip 'Flip' Benham when his anti-abortion group moved next door to the clinic where she was working. Reporters tricked 19-year-old Shelley Lynn Thornton into meeting them and then demanded to know where she stood on abortion rights. She grew up not knowing that she was the fetus in the Roe case until her birth mother appeared on the Today show in 1989 and talked about her desire to meet her daughter. She has three kids of her own and when she first became pregnant at 20, decided abortion was not 'part of who' she was. 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.. Twenty-six states are certain or likely to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, according to the pro-abortion rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute. She did her best to keep Norma confined, she said, in a dark little metal box, wrapped in chains and locked.. She was seeking only the one associated with Roe. Shelley and Doug moved up their wedding date. One year later, her birth mother started to look for her. After the incident, Thornton said, she was able to speak on the phone to McCorvey for the first time. But a hole in Tobys life had been filled. The history of the Roe v Wade, which has proved controversial since it was made in 1973, dates back half a century. Shelley Lynn Thornton, the biological daughter of Norma McCorvey, who used the pseudonym "Jane Roe" during litigation, told ABC News on Monday that she worries the SCOTUS ruling could portend. Thornton was 18 when she. Shelley Thornton: Daughter of 'Jane Roe' from landmark abortion case Being that I am bound to the center of Roe v. Wade, I have a unique perspective on this matter specifically." Filing a complaint alongside her was Texas doctor James Hallford, who argued the law's medical provision was vague and that he was unable to reliably determine which of his patients fell into the allowed category. McCluskey had introduced Norma to the attorney who initially filed the Roe lawsuit and who had been seeking a plaintiff. It became apparent to me really quickly that the only reason why she wanted to reach out to me and find me was because she wanted to use me for publicity, Thornton said. She already knew her two other daughters, but had only scant information about Thornton. Shelley watched her mother issue second chances, then watched her father squander them. Fitz said he was writing a similar story about Norma and Shelley. The first, 'I Am Roe' in 1994, included abortion-rights sentiments along with details of her early life of dysfunctional parents, reform school, petty crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, an abusive husband, an attempted suicide and lesbianism. Norma knew her first child, Melissa. [3] She reflected, "When someone's pregnant with a baby, and they don't want that baby, that person develops knowing they're not wanted. Norma won her case. She said the relationship turned platonic in the early 1990s and that once she became a Christian she believed homosexuality was wrong. Thornton spent the first 19 years of her life without knowing McCorvey was her birth mother. Though the decision has never been overturned, anti-abortionists have prompted hundreds of states laws since then narrowing the scope of the ruling. Its settled law in the nation., Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images. Some 20 years had passed since Norma had conceived her third child, yet she had begun searching for that child only a few weeks after retaining a prominent lawyer. Shelley Lynn Thornton, now 51, is the biological daughter of Norma McCorvey and spoke on the record for the first time in 2021. ( Tracy Nguyen for The Atlantic) Politics The. The women painted and cleaned apartments in a pair of buildings in South Dallas. Shelley now saw that she carried a great secret. She asked Norma about her father. I want everyone to understand, she later explained, that this is something Ive chosen to do.. Shelly Lynn Profiles | Facebook She had recently happened upon Holly Hunter playing Jane Roe in a TV movie. Norma wanted the very thing that Shelley did nota public outing in the pages of a national tabloid. Jennifer wanted to meet her, and she soon would. Shelley did not know if she ever could. . Identity of woman known as the 'Roe baby' revealed after decades of secrecy Shelley was in Tucson. Already getting in the party mood! [3] Thornton met her biological half-sisters, McCorvey's two other daughters, in March 2013. We have lots of information about Shelly: religious views . Baby of Norma McCorvey, Plaintiff in Supreme Court Abortion Case Roe v With her drug and alcohol problems, she gave custody of her daughter, Melissa Mills, to her mother who eventually adopted the girl. Billy, now a maintenance man for the apartment complex where the family lived in the city of Mesquite, Texas, was present for Shelley in a way he hadnt been for his other children. Over the coming decade, my interest would spread from that one child to Norma McCorveys other children, and from them to Norma herself, and to Roe v. Wade and the larger battle over abortion in America. Identity of 'Roe baby' revealed after decades of secrecy Politico reported Monday night that Justice Samuel Alito, one of six justices appointed by Republican presidents on the nine-member court, wrote a majority draft opinion in February repudiating both Roe and the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey decision. Playgrounds were a source of distress: Empty, they reminded Norma of Roe; full, they reminded her of the children she had let go. Hanft, though, attested in writing that, to the contrary, she had started looking for Shelley in conjunction [with] and with permission from Ms. McCorvey. The tabloid had a written record of Normas gratitude. Before Shelley, Norma McCorvey had two other daughters who she put up for adoption. She sought help, and was prescribed antidepressants. McCluskey had told Ruth and Billy that Shelley had two half sisters. We both like the same colors, we both like to do the same crafts and things like that. When she told Doug about her connection to Roe, he set her at ease: He was just like, Oh, cool. EXCLUSIVE Revealed: Bungling road chiefs put drivers at greater risk on smart motorways because orange paint Trendy hard floors could be to blame for your foot pain (and there is a simple way to stop it), Scientists discover what happens seconds after you die - activity in the brain and heart RAMPS UP, Scientists can now read your MIND: AI turns people's thoughts into text in real-time. All her life, Shelley had wanted to know the facts of her birth.
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