'Roe' in bid to overturn US abortion law

WASHINGTON - Jane Roe, whose name is immortalised in the Supreme Court judgment that gave American women the constitutional right to an abortion, could soon be back in court in a bid to get that landmark judgment reversed.

In papers lodged with the US attorney general yesterday, Ms Roe, whose real name is Norma McCorvey, attached her name to a case already filed in New Jersey that aims to revisit the whole question of abortion rights. She now claims she was used and exploited by the women's movement.

According to her lawyer, Harold Cassidy, this is a rare - perhaps the only - example of a litigant in such a landmark case seeking to return to court many years later in a bid to overturn the judgment.

McCorvey, who has eschewed the limelight since revealing her identity several years ago, almost broke down as she read her prepared statement and sections of her affidavit yesterday. Her brief introduction encapsulated the original drama in all its spare simplicity: "My name is Norma McCorvey, and I reside in Dallas, Texas. I was the woman designated as Jane Roe as plaintiff in Roe versus Wade, the US Supreme Court decision that legalised abortion in the United States. On January 22, 1973, the US Supreme Court declared that it was unconstitutional for my state to prohibit doctors from performing abortions."

She said the case was essentially a fraud. "As Jane Roe of Roe versus Wade," she said, "I was used and exploited in the women's movement and the Supreme Court of the United States." She had not understood the word "abortion", which she associated only with war films in which pilots "aborted" their missions.

It was only later when, still poor and homeless, she took jobs in abortion clinics and realised that "abortion was the taking of a human life" and a "fundamental violation of the mother's interests."

McCorvey's change of heart on abortion rights became public several years ago when she first revealed her identity. The decision of "Jane Roe" to associate herself with the New Jersey case brings the issue back into the public domain at a highly sensitive time.

With the presidential election in November, the religious right is already angling to have the Republican nominee, now confirmed as George W. Bush, undertake to name a running mate who is anti-abortion and to promise also that he will make an anti-abortion stance a "litmus test" for any Supreme Court judges he might appoint as President.

- INDEPENDENT