The eldest daughter of the woman who brought Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court in 1973 warned on Tuesday that overturning the landmark precedent that enshrined abortion rights into law “could take us back fifty years.”
Melissa Mills, the eldest daughter of Norma McCorvey, who was known as “Jane Roe,” said in an interview with MSNBC that she was in “disbelief” by the leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court showing the court’s conservative majority could overturn Roe v. Wade and abortion rights.
Mills said it should be a “woman’s given right to be able to handle her own body.”
“That shouldn’t be anybody else’s choice but that woman,” Mills added. “We came all this way and fifty years later … we’re stepping back from all these strides for women.”
McCorvey was a poor, working class, mother of two in Texas when she became pregnant with a third child. She wanted to terminate her pregnancy, but could not legally do so under the state’s abortion ban.
She found legal representation and took her case all the way to the Supreme Court as an anonymous plaintiff, with “Jane Roe” as an alias. But she gave birth to Mill’s younger sister, Shelley Lynn Thornton, before the final ruling.
McCorvey died from heart failure in 2017 at the age of 69.
Politico leaked the draft opinion on Monday night, shocking the nation and drawing fears that abortion rights could be overturned ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerns a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft but noted opinions could change.
MSNBC asked Mills why she would support abortion rights, because if a ban had not been in place before the 1973 ruling, her sister would not have been born.
“That shouldn’t even be a question,” Mills answered. “No one should be able to control a woman’s body.”
