Norma McCorvey, aka “Jane Roe” in the Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark abortion-rights decision Roe v. Wade, delivered a stunning confession before she died three years ago: she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Christian Right to claim she’d changed her mind and now opposed abortion.
In other words, her anti-abortion conversion was a lie.
McCorvey’s confession is seen in the final part of “AKA Jane Roe,” a new, 79-minute documentary.
It premieres Friday on FX and so will be out before release of a conservative film, “Roe v. Wade,” starring Jon Voight and Stacey Dash, that dramatizes McCorvey’s supposed pro-life conversion.
In the documentary, McCorvey sits in a chair in her nursing home and chuckles as she declares that this would be her deathbed confession, reports the Daily Beast.
The documentary filmmaker Nick Sweeney asks: “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?”
“Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.”
“Do you think you would say that you used them?”
“Well,” says McCorvey, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.”
McCorvey, who “grew up queer, poor, and was sexually abused by a family member,” says in the film she still supports the right of a woman to choose abortion or not and “admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was ‘all an act,’” the Daily Beast says.
So how much was she paid?
“AKA Jane Roe” reveals documents showing the anti-abortion movement paid McCorvey “at least $456,911,” which were characterized as “benevolent gifts.”
Watch the trailer for the film, above.