‘Jane Roe,’ from Roe v. Wade, made a stunning deathbed confession. Now what?

What to make of Norma McCorvey?

This week, a new documentary drops a boulder into the already complicated legacy of the woman better known as “Jane Roe” — the plaintiff in the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion in America. In the mid-1990s, McCorvey had made a public religious and political conversion. She was baptized on television in a backyard swimming pool; she wore overalls and came out beaming. She declared herself newly pro-life and spent the last two decades of her life crusading against the ruling her own case had made possible.