The eldest daughter of the woman who brought Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court in 1973 said that her mother, known by the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” would be “devastated” by Friday’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the landmark decision.
Melissa Mills, the daughter of Norma McCorvey, also known as Jane Roe, said she was in “disbelief” when news broke of the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and handed states authority to drastically limit or ban the procedure.
“I was in disbelief. I was devastated,” Mills said during an appearance on CNN’s “New Day.” “I knew it was coming, but it was just too real that it really happened.”
She added that her mother, who passed away of heart failure in 2017 at the age of 69, would be “devastated” to see that her grandchildren would not have the same rights that she fought for just under 50 years ago.
“My mother would just be devastated, just hard to believe now her grandkids are going to have the same rights as as we’ve had for 50 years,” Mills said.
When asked by host Brianna Keilar what her concerns were as a mother, Mills replied that it was the same concerns her mother worried about.
“Someone telling you what to do with your reproductive rights and someone having their hand on you, telling you when and where and how you need to live your life,” she said.
“As a woman, we have to take care of ourselves and sometimes we have to take care of ourselves in that way, and that should be our decision, nobody else’s. Nobody, especially not a man,” she added.
McCorvey, a working-class mother of two, became pregnant with a third child in Texas and wanted to terminate her pregnancy. However, she could not legally do so under the state’s abortion ban.
Through her legal representation, she was able to take her case to the Supreme Court as an anonymous plaintiff under the alias Jane Roe. She gave birth to Mill’s youngest sister Shelley Lynn Thornton before the final ruling.
Mills said she was proud of her mother for her work and for “going through and helping everyone.”
“It wasn’t just herself, she helped all women,” Mills said.
Following the decision, McCorvey became an evangelical Christian and later a Roman Catholic, declaring herself anti-abortion rights in the 1990s, according to The Washington Post.
In the documentary “AKA Jane Roe,” released on FX in 2020, she revealed on her deathbed that she had never fully supported the anti-abortion rights movement, saying that she “took their money and they put me out in front of the camera and told me what to say.”
Updated at 10:54 a.m.