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In the final moments of FX documentary AKA Jane Roe, Norma McCorvey, the woman at the center of the landmark Roe v. Wade case, makes a shocking deathbed confession: her late-in-life conversion to the anti-abortion cause was “all an act.” The new documentary tracks McCorvey’s transformation from pro-choice advocate to born-again, anti-gay Christian, a change that she says came about when Evangelical leaders came to her in the 1990s with a proposal. “It was a mutual thing,” says the woman known for much of her life as Jane Roe. “I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say.”
Directed by Nick Sweeney, AKA Jane Roe shines a light on Norma McCorvey, a young woman thrust into the spotlight in the early 1970s when she was unable to get a legal or safe abortion in Texas. Under the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” McCorvey became the focal point of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case, and her story ultimately led to the legalization of abortions in the United States in 1973. However, in 1995, McCorvey stunned reproductive rights’ advocates when she converted to Christianity and joined forces with the anti-abortion movement.
At the end of AKA Jane Roe, McCorvey, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 69, addresses her dramatic shift in ideology. “This is my deathbed confession,” she says. When Sweeney asks if anti-abortion leaders “used her as a trophy,” she insists that they did. “Of course,” says McCorvey. “I was the Big Fish.”
McCorvey then recites, from memory, some of the anti-abortion remarks that were scripted for her, including one about her “regret” over her involvement in Roe v. Wade. “I did it well. I am a good actress,” she says. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”
AKA Jane Roe shows various pro-choice and anti-abortion activists reacting to McCorvey’s confession, and they all seem to remember the situation differently. While Reverend Flip Benham flatly denies that McCorvey was paid by the Christian right, Reverend Schenck (who has come to reject the Evangelical movement, in recent years) admits that she was. In fact, the documentary reveals that according to finance records, McCorvey was given at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from anti-abortion leaders.
“I wondered, ‘Is she playing us?'” Schenck recalls of McCorvey. “What I didn’t have the guts to say was, ‘Because I know damn well we’re playing her.'” The reverend adds that “what we did with Norma was highly unethical,” as she was used as “a target” by the movement. “When you do what we did to Norma, you lose your soul,” said Schenck.
By the time of her death in 2017, McCorvey had once again rejected that Christian ideology. “If a young woman wants to have an abortion, fine,” she tells Sweeney. “That’s no skin off my ass. You know, that’s why they call it ‘choice.’ It’s your choice.”
AKA Jane Roe airs this Friday, May 22 at 9/8c on FX. The Norma McCorvey documentary will be available to stream on Hulu the following day.
