Shelley Lynn Thornton
| Shelley Lynn Thornton | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 2, 1970 Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Baby in Roe v. Wade case |
| 👶 Children | 3 |
| 👴 👵 Parent(s) | Norma McCorvey (biological mother) |
Shelley Lynn Thornton (born June 2, 1970) is the biological daughter of Norma McCorvey. 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. Her identity was not publicly known until 2021.[1]
Life[edit]
Shelley Lynn Thornton was born to Norma McCorvey on June 2, 1970, at the Dallas Osteopathic Hospital. At three days old, she was adopted by Ruth Schmidt of Texas and her soon-to-be husband Billy Thornton. Shelley Lynn Thornton was two-and-a-half years old when the Roe v. Wade ruling was issued. She graduated from Highline High School in 1988 and entered secretarial school.[2] Her birth mother, Norma McCorvey, first made contact with Thornton in 1989 when she was a teenager living near Seattle.[3]
Thornton married her boyfriend, Doug, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March 1991; they had a son later that year. She later had two daughters, one in 1999 and another in 2000, and moved to Tucson, Arizona, for her husband's job.[3] Thornton met her biological half-sisters, McCorvey's two other daughters, in March 2013. However, Thornton never met her birth-mother, McCorvey, although they had several telephone conversations.[3]
In 2021, Thornton's identity as the "Roe baby" was released in Joshua Prager's book, The Family Roe: An American Story.[4]
Discovery of Roe v. Wade connection[edit]
Shelley Lynn Thornton was McCorvey's third child. Although McCorvey had sought an abortion, she was prohibited from doing so by the laws in Texas at that time. McCorvey eventually brought, and won, a lawsuit, securing for women the constitutional right to an abortion. Despite McCorvey's desire to abort her pregnancy, Thornton was not aborted as a fetus, because the court proceedings in Roe v. Wade took too long.
Many years later, after Thornton learned of her identity as the "Roe baby", she engaged in telephone conversations with McCorvey. McCorvey told Shelley Thornton that she was placed for adoption because, Shelley recalled, "I knew I couldn’t take care of you."[5] 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.[6] Thornton also learned about her two older half-sisters from McCorvey, Melissa and Jennifer.[4]
In a 2021 interview, Thornton stated that she was neither pro-life nor pro-choice. 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. In response, a journalist for the National Enquirer found Thornton as a teenager and told her about her prenatal history. This made her very sad. In 1991, Thornton became pregnant and did not have an abortion because abortion was "not part of who I was". By 2021, she had met her two half-siblings, but not her birth mother. She nearly met her birth mother in 1994, but on the phone, according to Thorton, McCorvey told her that she should have thanked her for not having an abortion. Thornton's visceral reaction was "What! I'm supposed to thank you for getting knocked up ... and then giving me away?" She told her birth mother that she "would never, ever thank her for not aborting me".[3] She reflected that "When someone's pregnant with a baby, and they don't want that baby, that person develops knowing they're not wanted."[7]
Reversal of Roe[edit]
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court decided another abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. In Dobbs, the Court explicitly overruled Roe v. Wade. Thornton released a statement speaking out against the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe case. In a statement to ABC News, Thornton indicated that she worries the Dobbs ruling could portend future disquiet. "Too many times has a woman's choice, voice, and individual freedom been decided for her by others. Being that I am bound to the center of Roe v. Wade, I have a unique perspective on this matter specifically", Thornton told ABC News through her spokesperson. "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", she added. "We have lived in times of uncertainty and insecurity before, but to have such a fundamental right taken away and this ruling be overturned concerns me of what lies ahead."[8]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ O'Connor, Lydia (September 9, 2021). "'Roe Baby' At Center Of Landmark Abortion Case Is Identified For 1st Time". HuffPost. BuzzFeed, Inc. Archived from the original on December 29, 2021. Retrieved September 9, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Prager, Joshua (September 9, 2021). "The Roe Baby". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on June 24, 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Stump, Scott (September 9, 2021). "Identity of 'Roe baby' revealed after decades of secrecy". NBC News. Archived from the original on June 24, 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 4.0 4.1 VanHoose, Benjamin (September 9, 2021). "Woman Whose Conception Sparked Roe v. Wade Case Breaks Silence: 'I'm Keeping a Secret but I Hate It'". People. Archived from the original on May 4, 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ [1]
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ The Roe Family: An American Story by Joshua Prager, W. W. Norton & Company, September 14, 2021, page 116
- ↑ Biological daughter of 'Jane Roe' slams Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, saying it has been 'too many times' that a woman's choice 'has been decided for her by others'.
External links[edit]
- 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
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