AKA Jane Roe

All right, ladies.

It's time to go in and have our voices heard.

Together...

we can take our country back!

Oh, my fleas are waking up.

Oxygen?

This is my deathbed confession.

Okay.

I want you to meet Jane Roe.

- Jane Roe. - Roe, Jane Roe...

As in Roe v. Wade.

- Jane Roe's case changed the country.

all: Pro-choice! Pro-choice!

Pro-choice! Pro-choice!

Pro-choice! Pro-choice! Pro-choice!

Under the name Jane Roe...

- The anonymous plaintiff in the landmark Roe v. Wade

abortion rights case...

- Affirming a woman's right to choose...

- Norma McCorvey... - Is by her own estimation

perhaps the most famous cleaning woman in America.

all: Pro-choice! Freedom is...

Pro-choice! Freedom is...

Pro-choice! Freedom is...

Pro-choice!

- Norma McCorvey became the embodiment

of the pro-choice cause.

- A perfect symbol of the movement.

- Norma, why are you doing this?

- Jane Roe's story was a terrible one...

- Unmarried, pregnant, and dirt poor..

- A drug addict and dealer, an alcoholic.

She had dabbled in the occult.

- Norma, you've allowed the killing

of over 35 million children.

- Abortion, one of the most divisive issues of the decade.

- Few issues in America have generated

such strong feelings for and against.

- Either a cherished freedom...

Or a hated target.

- The furious battle that rages

around all that her name has stood for.

- Then, in the spring of 1995, the unbelievable happened.

- An extraordinary development today

in the politics of abortion.

- McCorvey did something that will shock people

on both sides of the debate.

- How did it get that bad? Explain that.

- You couldn't have come further, could you?

Ms. McCorvey, what happened?

*

*

- I'm just reading that sign over there.

"No boats or floats, no glass containers,

no wading or swimming, but enjoy your stay here."

Commissioner in precinct number three,

well, he's an asshole.

"But outside that, you know, enjoy our park."

*

Everything's got so many damn rules.

I think they suck.

I learned straight-on

that if you're nice and quiet and polite,

nobody pays any attention to you, and I like attention.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

"creeps in its petty pace from day to day

"to the last syllable of record time.

"Ah, but what is life but an act upon the stage

signifying nothing?"

What's that?

- Third act, "Macbeth," Shakespeare.

Why do you like that bit?

- You know, Macbeth was just a cool guy.

Here you go, baby.

- What did you want to be when you were young?

- When I was young? A movie star.

They went to all these glamorous places,

and they got to fly on airplanes

and smoke cigarettes out of those long cigarette holders.

I mean, it just looked like such fun.

Do you miss your family?

- You know, you can't miss anything you never had.

I came from a very rough childhood.

*

We were poor.

It wasn't a happy time at all.

It was always survival.

My mom,

she was a bitch.

You know, she was just a two-faced bitch.

She didn't want to have a second child, me.

*

It's just that simple.

She was a drunk.

She'd got a taste of the party life,

and she didn't want to let go.

*

My dad just got through with it.

He packed up his truck and took off.

*

Once she started drinking, I really didn't want

to be around her.

She'd get up, and she'd slap me.

It would make me feel insignificant

and worthless.

And so I asked my friend Rita,

"Do you want to run away with me?"

She said, "Well, where would we run away to?"

And I said, "Oklahoma City."

To get to Oklahoma City, we had to rob the gas station.

*

I was 10 or 11.

I went over there and opened the drawer up real quietly.

I stuck my hand in the drawer, and I got all the money out,

and I thought, "God, I feel bad."

*

The only hotel we could find was called the Black Hotel.

*

The maid walked in on us and caught us kissing,

Rita and I kissing.

She called the police on us.

*

Anytime you do anything out of the mainframe of society,

it's considered dirty.

- She ran away with another girl

and was arrested,

basically, in the Oklahoma City hotel room

where they'd scammed their way in.

*

By and by, a police detective came by,

took Norma aside,

told her she was in big trouble,

and asked her if she had committed sodomy,

so she said no,

and then she turned to him and said,

"Are you asking whether I put my hand in her underpants?

Yeah, I did that."

- Eventually, they sent me

to Gainesville State School for Girls.

It's a reform school.

You go there to get reformed

if you've been bad.

I was, like, so young.

I was sentenced at ten years old,

and I resented it a great deal,

but once I got there and I saw

that it wasn't a dungeon,

it was okay.

Gainesville was a trip...

It's wall-to-wall women.

*

My God, I never saw so many boobs in my life...

*

Tons of girlfriends.

I stayed there till I was 15.

*

- Just after she'd come back from reform school,

she was farmed out

to live with somebody who had an extra room.

A relative.

- And she was sexually abused by that--that man.

*

I was just a kid.

*

It was extremely hard for me to tell my mom

what he was doing to me.

- It completely messed up her feelings

about love and acceptance.

- I felt like I was out in the cold.

- There were many instances in her early life

where she really was seriously exploited

and harmed and abused,

so I think she became used to that idea.

That sort of became her identity in a way,

and she never went and got really help

to deal with the abuses.

You know, those don't go away.

- This is my room at the nursing home.

That's a picture of Jesus.

He's my boyfriend.

This reminds me of the pyramids of Egypt,

and then this is a little number

that I picked up at a flea market.

I'm a very glamorous person.

I can't help it. It's a gift.

These are my house shoes that my daughter brought me.

They're quite femme.

Yeah, I guess they are.

I would consider myself more butch than I would femme.

Reason beings--well, I can't tell you the reason.

I spend most of my days now coloring.

I try to keep away from people.

I was here five months before they even got a handle on me,

and I was very happy just being Norma McCorvey,

but now that they know that I'm Jane Roe,

or AKA Jane Roe,

um...I feel as though they look at me differently.