what an interesting read. i know her family would hate this takeaway, but whew norma (jane roe of roe v wade) was truly an awful person. or at least someone who required devotion and attention and financial support from everyone around her, but gave nothing to anyone else. like nothing. ugh.

this wasn't a history of roe v wade, but there is a lot of that in here, and it's an important reminder now that it's been overturned. the irony is how norma is exactly the kind of woman/mother the gop would rail against, if she were forced to be a mother. the hypocrisy is obvious, and norma's exploitation of both sides of the issue (and her exploitation from both) is gross and sad. so often the lawyers look for the perfect plaintiff, and after reading this i'm really not sure if they actually did, with norma, or if it was the opposite. ( )

If you’re younger than 50, you’ve never lived in an America that wasn’t riven by the topic of abortion. From December 13, 1971, when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled the procedure legal, and June 24, 2022, when it reversed itself on the subject, the decision commonly known as Roe v. Wade has driven a wedge through the fabric of American thought deeper than virtually any moral question since the issue of slavery. And in the wake of its reversal under Dobbs v. Jackson, the controversy continues to divide communities, influence national elections, and impact the lives of thousands of women facing unplanned, unwanted, or dangerous pregnancies.

But chances are, almost everything you thought you knew about Roe v. Wade is wrong -- or at least, incomplete, and almost certainly wildly inaccurate.

Joshua Prager takes on the topic in his exhaustive (and emotionally exhausting) study, [The Family Roe: An American Story], focusing on the people involved in both sides of the controversy. And although the book’s 2021 publication date predates Dobbs, Prager’s study butts right up against the decision with the acknowledgement that the Court would almost certainly take the path it ultimately chose. He chooses to tell the story through the framework of the individuals most closely affiliated with the issue – the pseudonymous Jane Roe, her attorneys Linda Coffee and Sara Weddington, abortion providers like Dr. Curtis Boyd, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the Roe decision, and the pro-life supporters who rose to prominence in the movement – Mildred Jefferson, Randall Terry, Flip Benham, and Fr. Frank Pavone among many others.

But he returns time and again to “Jane Roe” – a young woman named Norma McCorvey, who faced her third non-marital pregnancy with the determination to terminate it but who could not come up with the going price of $500 for the then-illegal procedure. Norma discussed her dilemma with attorney Henry McCluskey, who had helped place her second child for adoption. As it happened, McCluskey had filed a lawsuit challenging Texas’ anti-sodomy laws and in doing so had consulted with Linda Coffee, whom he knew to be looking for a plaintiff to challenge the state’s abortion ban and who, after learning of Norma’s request, reached out to her former law school friend, Sara Weddington, a feminist attorney also interested in the topic. So by almost pure happenstance – a Tinkers to Evers to Chance triple-play on the legal field rather than the baseball diamond, Norma was tagged by the McCluskey to Coffee to Weddington combo and became Jane Roe.

A more unlikely poster girl for women’s rights would have been hard to come by. A high-school dropout with drug and alcohol issues and a promiscuous sexual history including both male and female partners, Norma was a stubborn iconoclast with a tendency to amend her history with an eye to whichever version of her story would seem to put her in the best bargaining position at the moment. She carried through with the lawsuit even though her attorneys cautioned her that it would almost certainly not be settled in time for her to legally terminate her pregnancy, and in fact she gave birth to her third and final child before the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down.

Norma’s rough-hewn appearance, her continued alcohol dependency, and her unpredictability as a speaker, made her largely unacceptable to the growing pro-choice movement that came into being as the topic of abortion began to be debated publicly. Ultimately, driven either by the rejection she felt from organizations like NARAL, or from the nagging guilt remaining from her Fundamentalist Christian childhood, Norma McCorvey – Jane Roe – declared herself “born again” and began to be courted by the pro-life contingent. Just who was using whom remains debatable throughout the book. McCorvey definitely wanted to be admired – and paid – for her brave stand … and which side of that “brave stand” she wanted to come down on was generally influenced by the number of zeroes attached to her speaking fees and honoraria. Prager describes her as “disagreeable and opportunistic”. According to her eldest daughter, Melissa, “On the pro-choice side, she could be who she wanted to be but they didn’t respect her. On the pro-life side, they respected her, but she couldn’t be who she wanted to be.” What Norma wanted to be, says Prager, “was gay and pro-choice – but only moderately pro-choice. Norma no more absolutely opposed Roe than she’d ever absolutely supported it.”

The topic of Norma’s sexuality – and indeed, of the gay community’s inextricable involvement with Roe’s underlying foundation of the Constitutional right to privacy – is interwoven throughout the book. Many of the major players in the drama – including McCluskey and Coffee – were closeted homosexuals at a time and place when being so put them at direct risk for criminal prosecution. Norma’s full acceptance by the religion-based pro-life faction was predicated on her ending her decades-long relationship with the woman who was her longest-tenured partner. Norma, predictably, tried to play it both ways, refusing to move out but insisting that the relationship no longer extended to physical intimacy.

Ultimately, this tangle of broken family ties, lives disrupted by unintended pregnancies, the clash of public and private morals, the ascendancy of the Christian Right as a political force, the medications and treatment options that moved fetal viability earlier and earlier in a pregnancy and their clash with procedures that made abortion safe for women later and later in term, all intertwine on a canvas of human fallibility, deeply-held religious beliefs, manipulation, falsehoods, shifting political sands, and always, always, that question people of good faith are still struggling to answer – at what point do the human rights of the woman outweigh the rights of the unborn?

The Family Roe is not an easy read. But it is compelling, thought-provoking, and ultimately, brutally, honest. ( )

This book was hard to read. It was hard to read about how awful Norma McCorvey was, and how poorly people treated her. It was hard to read about the trauma at the center of the lives of Norma's three daughters. It was hard to read about all of the people dedicated to eroding choice over the past 50 years, especially considering they have finally been successful at overturning Roe. It was hard to read because of the fact that many women's lives are worse off, thanks to the "pro life" folks featured in this book. It was hard to read because women's choices, experiences, and lives have never mattered much to the people making policy in this country. ( )

This is an exhaustively told history of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case and all those individuals either directly or indirectly involved. It is also a history of the growth of the abortion business and the providers involved. The book is long and at times can be a slug to get through. At times it will make both sides of the issue upset. It is also quite explicit in some areas and may make you put it down to take a break from the feelings it will create.

I chose to read the book in part because of the current case before the Supreme Court, but also because when I read about the book, it made me want to get as full an understanding of a history this divisive issue as possible, since my feelings about the issue have shifted over time. However, I was dead wrong in hoping the book would help me in this regard.
As the author readily admits, he is in the pro-choice column, so do expect some of the book to come across in that column. However, I give him credit for trying to present both sides of the issue by how extensive he has researched and reported it.

The book is a good recap of many broken lives, families, and relationships and there is much sadness in reading of them. ( )