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Heres my chance at finding out who my birth mother was, she said, and I wasnt even going to be able to have control over it because I was being thrown into the Enquirer.. The story quoted Hanft. Doors slammed. Genealogy for Shelley Lynn Thornton (McCorvey) family tree on Geni, with over 245 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. Chavez took careful notes. All her life, Shelley had wanted to know the facts of her birth. Thornton was two-and-a-half when Roe v Wade was decided. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, She didn't deserve to meet me. To better represent that divide in my book, I also wrote about an abortion provider, a lawyer, and a pro-life advocate who are as important to the larger story of abortion in America as they are unknown. 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. Unfortunately, she said, your birth mother is Jane Roe., That name Shelley recognized. The Supreme Court, with a 63 conservative majority, is scheduled to take up the question of abortion in its upcoming term. [2] Her birth mother first made contact with Thornton in 1989 when she was a teenager living near Seattle. And he was on deadline. View the profiles of people named Shelly Lynn. A decade later, in 1981, Norma briefly volunteered for the National Organization for Women in Dallas. This is rocket fuel in their engine, Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, told HuffPost last week. Ruth turned to a lawyer, a friend of a friend. She is their only child. The case was filed in 1971 by Norma McCorvey, a 22-year-old living in Texaswho was unmarried and seeking a termination of her unwanted pregnancy. Shelley then began to look online for her pseudonymous self, to learn what was being written about the Roe baby. The pro-life community saw that unknown baby as a symbol. Baby Roe: Shelley Lynn Thornton, a 51-year-old mother of three, has spoken out for the first time on camera. 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. Ruth spoke up: She wanted proof. The evidence was unassailable. I found in them a reference to the place and date of birth of the Roe baby, as well as to her gender. She and Doug had made plans to marry, and Shelley was due to deliver two months after the wedding date. She graduated from Highline High School in 1988 and entered secretarial school. We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. Join Facebook to connect with Shelly Lynn and others you may know. Texas is once again the epicenter of the abortion fight after the Supreme Court declined to block a restrictive state law banning abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy and allowing anyone in the U.S. to sue abortion providers or others who help women get the procedure after that time frame. Supreme Court abortion ruling updates: Americans can get abortions in The daughter of Jane Roe the woman whose case was used in the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision says she has no regrets about never meeting her biological mother. But when, in the spring of 1994, Norma called Shelley to say that she and Connie, her partner, wished to come and visit, mother and daughter were soon at odds. Jennifer wanted to meet her, and she soon would. Her plan for a Roseanne-style reunion was coming apart. 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. McCorvey, who revealed her identity shortly after the landmark case, died at 69 in 2017 after a complicated public life. However, she performed an unlikely U-turn in 1995, becoming a born-again Christian and began traveling the country speaking out against the procedure. 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. 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. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Decades after her father left home, it would occur to Shelley that the genesis of her unease preceded his disappearance. McCorvey eventually brought, and won, a lawsuit, securing for women the constitutional right to an abortion. Roe was 'Jane Roe,' a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a single mother pregnant for the third time, who wanted an abortion. And she was not looking for her second child. The trio of complaints - from a woman who wanted an abortion, a doctor who wanted to perform them and a non-pregnant woman who wanted the right if the need arose - ultimately reached the nation's top court. She opened it to find a young woman who introduced herself as Audrey Lavin. At Normas urging, her own mother, Mary, had adopted the girl (though Norma later claimed that Mary had kidnapped her). Shelley Lynn Thornton was publicly identified in an excerpt published from an upcoming book Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe in the 1973 court case, left, and her attorney Gloria Allred hold hands as they leave the Supreme Court on April 26, 1989. Ruth interjected, We dont believe in abortion. Hanft turned to Shelley. ', McCorvey is pictured in 1998. Leave us alone. Again, she began to cry. I knew what I didnt want to do, Shelley said. It now seemed to her that abortion law ought to be free of the influences of religion and politics. She wanted to know them, to share her thoughts, to tell them about her father or about how much she hated science and gym. Having idly mused as a girl that her birth mother was a beautiful actor, she now knew that her birth mother was synonymous with abortion. "Norma's personal life was complex. When Shelley was 7, Billy found work as a mechanic in Houston. Baby Whose Conception Inspired Roe V Wade Finally Identified - Insider 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. 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 1960, at the age of 17, she married a military man from her hometown, and the couple moved to an Air Force base in Texas. They kept asking me what side I was on, she recalled. But Shelley was not able to lock her birth mother away. But she did an about-face and later spoke out on behalf of anti-abortion campaignersafter befriending The Rev. ( Tracy Nguyen for The Atlantic) Politics The. She had been among only five women out of a class of 1,600 to graduate with a law degree from the University of Texas in 1967. She told them she didnt even know what that meant before Ruth was able to escort away from the media barrage. She gave custody of her daughter to her mother. I wondered too if he or she might wish to speak about it. McCorvey told Shelley Thornton that she was placed for adoption because, Shelley recalled, "I knew I couldn't take care of you. 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. Thereafter, slowly, she became an activistworking at first with pro-choice groups and then, after becoming a born-again Christian in 1995, with pro-life groups. Thornton, who never met her birth mother in person before her death in 2017, told journalist Joshua Prager she had decided to speak out after more than half a century because she wanted to free herself from the 'secrets and lies. EXCLUSIVE: High-ranking Met Police officer on 100,000-a-year who was found to be a regular user of Can the Keto diet help treat mental illness? McCorvey was 22 years old in 1970, unmarried and pregnant in Texas, where abortion was illegal. Shelley was the single mother's third pregnancy. Her depression deepened. But he did not identify them, or Norma, or say anything about the Roe lawsuit that Norma had filed three months earlier. The two told ABC they had an instant bond. Now they talk nearly every day. As the kids grew up, and began to resemble her and Doug in so many ways, Shelley found herself ever more mindful of whom she herself sometimes resembledmindful of where, perhaps, her anxiety and sadness and temper came from. Thorntons identity as the daughter of Jane Roe, or Norma McCorvey, was revealed last month in an article in the Atlantic. We have lots of information about Shelly: religious views . The bit of the movie she watched had left her with the thought that Jane Roe was indecent. 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. The notion of finally laying claim to Norma was empowering. Months after filing Roe, Norma met a woman named Connie Gonzales, almost 17 years her senior, and moved into her home.