In April 1989, Norma McCorvey attended an abortion-rights march in Washington, D.C. She had revealed her identity as Jane Roe days after the Roe decision, in 1973, but almost a decade elapsed before she began to commit herself to the pro-choice movement. Also referred to by the pseudonym "Roe Baby", Thornton is the child at the center of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade. '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. She was baptized an evangelical Christianbefore network TV cameras by Benham, who was the leader of Operation Rescue, now known as Operation Save America. She set everything else aside and worked in secrecy. Edo Mapelli Mozzi and Jack Brooksbank wear the exact same outfit to party also attended by She's got a right Lotte cheek with tantrums, feisty remarks and bossing her brothers about. Lavin wrote that Shelley was of American historyboth a part of a great decision for women and the truest example of what the right to life can mean. Her desire to tell Shelleys story represented, she wrote, an obligation to our gender. She signed off with an invitation to call her at Seattles Stouffer Madison Hotel. The third child was the one whose conception led to Roe. But Shelley let the hours pass on that winters day. The women painted and cleaned apartments in a pair of buildings in South Dallas. Ruth spoke up: She wanted proof. On January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court finally handed down its decision, she had long since given birthand relinquished her child for adoption. The abortion debate entered Thornton's own life in 1991, when she became pregnant at 20. 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. Thorntons birth mother was the plaintiff in that case who wanted to legally end her pregnancy in Texas. In a television studio in Manhattan, the Today host Jane Pauley asked Norma why she had decided to look for her. You aint never seen a happier woman, Billy recalled. She went with her adoptive mother, Ruth. Roe was 'Jane Roe,' a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a single mother pregnant for the third time, who wanted an abortion. The investigator handed Shelley a recent article about Norma in People magazine, and the reality sank in. She decided that she would have no more children. In addressing her activism for the religious right, McCorvey boasts: 'I'm a good actress.'. She told Shelley that shed given her up because, Shelley recalled, I knew I couldnt take care of you. She also told Shelley that she had wondered about her always. Shelley listened to Normas words and her smokers voice. A week passed before Ruth explained that Billy would not return. The two told ABC they had an instant bond. Now they talk nearly every day. [4], In a 2021 interview, Thornton stated that she was not pro-choice or pro-life. We have lots of information about Shelly: religious views . My darling, she began a letter to Shelley, be re-assured that Ms. Gloria Allred has sent a letter to the Nat. 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. When Shelley returned, she was shaking all over and crying.. Its settled law in the nation., Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images. This nineteen-year-old womans life was saved by that Texas law, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee said at the time. My association with Roe, she said, started and ended because I was conceived., Shelleys burden, however, was unending. 'We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,' he continues in the document, titled 'Opinion of the Court. By 2021, she had met her two half-siblings but not her birth mother. 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. Seeing double! She was still afraid to let her secret out, but she hated keeping it in. And they took in their similarities: the long shadow of their shared birth mother and the desperate hopes each of them had had of finding one another. ', Shelley Thorton was adopted as a baby and raised by Ruth and Billy Thornton, a married couple. Shelley determined that she would have the baby. For her to have to keep that under lock and key for so many years and not talk about it, it can only hurt, and she doesnt want to do that anymore, Ferguson said. I am done, she told Doug. Though she was still against abortion, she said she had reservations about the group's confrontational style. We decided we did not want another. The girl born at Dallas Osteopathic Hospital on June 2, 1970, did not join either of her older half sisters. In the decade since Norma had been thrust upon her, Shelley recalled, Norma and Roe had been always there. Unknowing friends on both sides of the abortion issue would invite Shelley to rallies. The next day, flowers arrived with a note. 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.. Norma told her little except his first nameBilland what he looked like. With her drug and alcohol problems, she gave custody of her daughter, Melissa Mills, to her mother who eventually adopted the girl. 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." Shelley Lynn. Prager writes: From Shelleys perspective, it was clear that if she, the Roe baby, could be said to represent anything, it was not the sanctity of life but the difficulty of being born unwanted.. [4], Thornton was McCorvey's third child. Doors slammed. The landmark ruling saw abortions decriminalized in 46 states, but under certain specific conditions which individual states could decide on. When she told Doug about her connection to Roe, he set her at ease: He was just like, Oh, cool. And she was not looking for her second child. She would call town halls asking for information. But she got through ninth grade, shedding her Texas accent and making friends at Highline High. Thornton has kept her personal views on abortion close to my chest, not wanting to be used like McCorvey was. you know, the pro-life . 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. Shelley Lynn Thornton (born June 2, 1970) is the biological daughter of Norma McCorvey. I wondered too if he or she might wish to speak about it. She told ABC News through her spokesperson, "Too many times has a woman's choice, voice, and individual freedom been decided for her by others. Part of HuffPost Politics. She charged clients $1,500 for a typical search, twice that if there was little information to go on. Duchess of Buccleuch dies aged 68 after 'short illness' following operation, her family reveal - just days Charles' Gladiator! When the Enquirer had tracked her down, Thornton's adoptive mom, Schmidt, told the journalist 'we don't believe in abortion,' she said. It was a game. Roe's lawyers said she was unable to travel out of the state to obtain an abortion and argued that the law was too vague and infringed on her constitutional rights. The motion moved through the courts until it was ultimately denied by the Supreme Court in 2005. 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. She no more absolutely opposed Roe than she had ever absolutely supported it; she believed that abortion ought to be legal for precisely three months after conception, a position she stated publicly after both the Roe decision and her religious awakening. Shelley Lynn Thornton, photographed in Tucson this summer. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. The Atlantics excerpt comes as abortion bans dominate the news. And when shes ready, Im ready to take her in my arms and give her my love and be her friend. But an unnamed Shelley made clear that such a day might never come. '", She said she'd grown up with the idea that 'if a familymember had a baby, they couldn't take care of it, then somebodyelse in the family took it and took care of it.'. Hanft was thrilled to get the Enquirer assignment. Shelley watched her mother issue second chances, then watched her father squander them. Ruth and Billy ran off, settling in the Dallas area. Or is it not cool? And they said, 'Well, she is the woman who they used to do the Roe versus Wade case. She became instead, with the help of McCluskey, the only child of a woman in Dallas named Ruth Schmidt and her eventual husband, Billy Thornton. McCorvey fell pregnant to a different man and gave the baby up for adoption in 1967. I dont like not knowing what shes doing, Shelley explained. 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. Shelley was still unsure about meeting Norma when, four years later, in February 2017, Melissa let Jennifer and Shelley know that Norma was intubated and dying in a Texas hospital. Official records yielded an adoptive name. In Dobbs, the Court explicitly overruled Roe. The papers helped me establish the true details of her life. She was 2 years old by the time the Roe v. Wade ruling came down and living with her adoptive parents in Texas, and her existence itself became a symbol to anti-abortion activists. 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. They soared on swings, unaware that happy playgrounds had always made Norma ache for themthe daughters she had let go. She would become known as the plaintiff, Jane Roe, in the 1973 Supreme Court case that made abortion a federally protected right. Twenty-six states are likely to ban it if Roe v. Wade is formally overturned, essentially outlawing abortion in more than half of the country. She has three kids of her own and when she first became pregnant at 20, decided abortion was not 'part of who' she was. And she delivered. It was her third pregnancy that catapulted her into the abortion rights struggle. Norma was ambivalent about abortion. However, pro-lifers contended it was tantamount to murder and that every life, no matter how it was conceived, is precious. She gave custody of her daughter to her mother. Shelley had replied, she recalled, that she hoped Norma and Connie would be discreet in front of her son: How am I going to explain to a 3-year-old that not only is this person your grandmother, but she is kissing another woman? Norma yelled at her, and then said that Shelley should thank her. She is their only child. [2] Thornton also learned about her two older half-sisters from McCorvey, Melissa and Jennifer. Despite McCorvey's desire to abort the fetus, Thornton was not aborted as a fetus, because the court proceedings in Roe v. Wade took too long. McCorveywas baptized an evangelical Christian in the 1990s before network TV cameras by Benham, who was the leader of Operation Rescue, now known as Operation Save America, Norma McCorveystands with her friend Meredith Champion, 9, at an Operation Rescue rally in downtown Dallas in January 1997. Abortion has become a hotly contested issue over the past year after many states passed strict abortion laws. 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. She liked attention and got it. I want her to experience this joythe good that it brings, she told me. In early June 1970, the lawyer called with the news that a newborn baby girl was available. She gave birth to three children, each of whom was put up for adoption. I want to hold you now and give you my love, but Im still upset about the fact that I couldnt abort you? But speaking to her daughter for the first time, Norma didnt mention abortion. And they said, Well, she is the woman who they used to do the Roe versus Wade case. Fox admits 'damage' from partying may have led to Parkinson's, Kelly Ripa posts Mark Consuelos PDA pic for 27th anniversary: Love of my life, Rihannas makeup artist swears by these drugstore beauty buys, Tom Sandoval defends lying to Ariana about Raquel sleeping over pre-Scandoval, Khristina Williams previews the New York Liberty's 2023 WNBA season, Elon Musk Tells Bill Maher Woke Mind Virus Is Dangerous On Real Time, Perez Hilton: 'Boring' Meghan and Harry need to 'give up and move' back to UK. Her identity was not publicly known until 2021. She never expressed genuine feeling for me or genuine remorse for doing the things that she did, saying the things that she did over and over and over again. Instead, I called her adoptive mother, Ruth, who said that the family had learned about Norma. Shelley Lynn Thornton was two-and-a-half years old when the Roe v. Wade ruling was issued. The brother introduced the couple to Henry McCluskey. 'I don't understand why it's a government concern,' she said. McCorvey eventually brought, and won, a lawsuit, securing for women the constitutional right to an abortion. Two days later, Shelley and Ruth drove to Seattles Space Needle, to dine high above the city with Hanft and her associate, a mustachioed man named Reggie Fitz. Shelley Lynn Thornton was born to Norma McCorvey on June 2, 1970, at the Dallas Osteopathic Hospital. I knew what I didnt want to do, Shelley said. She sought help, and was prescribed antidepressants. 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. McCorvey was born in Louisiana in 1947 and spent part of her childhood there until her family moved to Dallas. 'My whole thinking is that, "oh God everybody is going to hateme because everyone is going to blame me for abortion being legal,"' she said. But he did not identify them, or Norma, or say anything about the Roe lawsuit that Norma had filed three months earlier. Her biological mother Norma McCorvey was Jane Roe, whose landmark lawsuit Roe vs Wade won women across America the right to have abortions, Shelley said she is neither pro-life or pro-choice. 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. In 2003, a she filed a motion to overturn her original 1973 rulingwith the U.S. district court in Dallas. Years later, when Billys brother adopted a baby girl, Ruth decided that she wanted to adopt a child too. Their dinner was not yet ready, and the three women crossed the street to a playground. But several months after Roe was decided, in a tragedy unrelated to the case, McCluskey was murdered. The Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years ago recognized that the right to personal privacy under the US Constitution protects a woman's ability to terminate her pregnancy. She wasnt sorry, about giving me away or anything.. She was known throughout the proceedings as Jane Roe but later was revealed to be Norma McCorvey, who died in 2017. The Enquirer published an article in 1989 revealing the so-called 'Roe baby' had been found but, at her request, did not reveal Thornton's identity. Shelley and Ruth were aghast. She nearly met her birth mother in 1994; according to Thornton, McCorvey told her on the phone that she should have thanked her for not having an abortion. The news that Norma was seeking her child had angered some in the pro-life camp. 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. Mother and daughter had a cold reunion, Jonah Hanft told me. Shelley Lynn Thornton was two-and-a-half years old when the Roe v. Wade ruling was issued. 'She never did anything in her life to get that privilege back.'. Of those, 22 states already have total or near-total bans on the books that are currently blocked by Roe, aside from Texas. The news was not all bad: The Enquirer would withhold Shelleys name. Eighteen states already have restrictive abortion laws in place. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, she remained an ardent supporter of abortion rights and worked for a time at a Dallas women's clinic where abortions were performed. She gave a second child up for adoption, but when she got pregnant a third time she decided to have an abortion. The three met at a pizza parlor when Norma was eight weeks pregnant. Eight months had passed since the Enquirer story when, on a Sunday night in February 1990, there was a knock at the door of the home Shelley shared with her mother. Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, has revealed herself as the youngest daughter born to Norma McCorvey, whose lawsuit under the pseudonym "Jane Roe" led to the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling that. What is she going to say to that child when she finds him? a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee had asked a reporter rhetorically. Then, as Hanft would later recount, she told Shelley that her mother was famousbut not a movie star or a rich person. Rather, her birth mother was connected to a national case that had changed law. There was much more to say, and Hanft asked Shelley if she would meet with her and her business partner. She was born in June of 1970, a few months after Norma McCorvey filed Roe and a few years before the case was decided. Shelley had long considered abortion wrong, but her connection to Roe had led her to reexamine the issue. Roes pseudonymous plaintiff, Jane Roe, was a Dallas waitress named Norma McCorvey. Wishing to terminate her pregnancy, she filed suit in March 1970 against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, challenging the Texas laws that prohibited abortion. In 2005, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by McCorvey to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. Jennifer wanted to meet her, and she soon would. Reporters tricked 19-year-old Shelley Lynn Thornton into meeting them and then demanded to know where she stood on abortion rights. When someones pregnant with a baby, she reflected, and they dont want that baby, that person develops knowing theyre not wanted. But as a teenager, Shelley had not yet had such thoughts. We already had adopted one of her children, the mother, Donna Kebabjian, recalled in a conversation years later. The comments below have not been moderated. The news sent shock waves throughout Washington D.C. with Democrats vowing to codify the legal right to an abortion into law and Republicans celebrating the news. Her name: Shelley Lynn Thornton. She is speaking out now,. 'She wasn't sorry, about giving me away or anything,' she said. How could you possibly talk to someone who wanted to abort you? Norma told one reporter at the time. Secrets and lies are, like, the two worst things in the whole world, she said. One incident that grew to bother her, Thornton says, was a 1989 article in the National Enquirer that described her as being pro-life a snippet that anti-abortion activists seized on. The National Right to Life Committee seized upon the story. Shelley was horrified. ', Shelley Thornton (pictured during childhood) knew she was adopted but didn't know who her birth mother was until 1989 when she was contacted by reporters from The National Enquirer. Tracing leads, I found my way to her in early 2011. The answers Shelley had sought all her life were suddenly at hand. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, the daughter of Norma McCorvey (below) and 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." She did her best to keep Norma confined, she said, in a dark little metal box, wrapped in chains and locked.. Join Facebook to connect with Shelly Lynn and others you may know. And I dont know when Ill ever be readyif ever. She added: In some ways, I cant forgive her I know now that she tried to have me aborted.. She had stood by Norma through decades of infidelity, combustibility, abandonment, and neglect. Connie alerted me to the existence of a jumbled mass of papers that Norma had left behind in their garage and that were about to be thrown out. She also confessed to lying when she said the pregnancy was the result of rape. And after keeping her identity secret for more than 50 years, Shelley Lynn Thornton has come to terms with her identity, saying in her first on-camera interview that the ruling has nothing to do with me.. Though the decision has never been overturned, anti-abortionists have prompted hundreds of states laws since then narrowing the scope of the ruling. In early 1991, Shelley found herself pregnant. Leave us alone. Again, she began to cry. When Shelley was 5, she decided that her birth parents were most likely Elvis Presley and the actor Ann-Margret. This is rocket fuel in their engine, Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, told HuffPost last week. McCorvey became a leading, outspoken pro-abortion voice in American discourse, even working at a women's clinic where abortions were performed. For not aborting her, said Norma, who of course had wanted to do exactly that. It was so not Texas, Shelley said; the rain and the people left her cold. If Roe was overturned, he went on, countless others would be saved too. She is 51. They hadnt even ordered dinner, but they hurried out. A 51-year-old Arizona mother of three named Shelley Lynn Thornton has identified herself as the daughter of Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. 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. Im supposed to thank you for getting knocked up and then giving me away, Thornton recalled saying. BREAKING:Treasury Department says U.S. could hit debt ceiling as soon as June 1, sooner than expected. I am never going to be able to get away from this! The lawyer sent another strong letter. Shelley Lynn Thornton, photographed in Tucson this summer. Thornton, who is now a mother of three living in Arizona, nearly met McCorvey in person in 1994 before an angry phone conversation derailed the meeting. On June 2, 1970, 37 girls had been born in Dallas County; only one of them had been placed for adoption. Hanft died in 2007, but two of her sons spoke with me about her life and work, and she once talked about her search for the Roe baby in an interview. But then life changed. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, has come forward to reveal that she is the youngest daughter of McCorvey - the woman known as Jane Roe. McCluskey, the adoption lawyer, was dead, but Norma herself provided Hanft with enough information to start her search: the gender of the child, along with her date and place of birth. My association with Roe started and ended because I was conceived, Thornton tells Prager, whom she began communicating with in 2012. He had then handled the adoption of Normas child. Despite everything, Shelley sometimes entertained the hope of a relationship with Norma. She told Shelley that they could meet in person. IE 11 is not supported. Told that any legal decision would come too late to . McCorvey had written two autobiographies in her lifetime - one about pro-abortion and later about her change in stance. (The first was a pioneering pathologist who coined the term appendicitis.) She began to look hard and long at every girl in every park. It now seemed to her that abortion law ought to be free of the influences of religion and politics. Shelly Thornton is 49 years old and was born on 03/10/1973. [3] Thornton met her biological half-sisters, McCorvey's two other daughters, in March 2013. At three days old, she was adopted by then-engaged Texas residents, Ruth Schmidt and Billy Thornton. 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. 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. And thats really hard to grasp when youre in that kind of a situation and youre just kind of like learning all of this stuff..