Norma McCorvey, "Jane Roe," Arrested At Sotomayor Hearing

WASHINGTON — The plaintiff in the landmark abortion-rights case Roe v. Wade, who became an abortion protester in recent years, was among four demonstrators arrested Monday for disrupting Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination hearing.

Norma McCorvey, 61, of Texas, better known as "Jane Roe," began screaming that Sotomayor was "wrong" about abortion during the opening statement of the newest member of the Senate, Al Franken, D-Minn.

McCorvey's suit led to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. But in recent years, she switched sides to speak out against abortion.

Capitol Police identified the other three arrested as: Robert James, from Virginia; Andrew Beacham of Indiana; and Francis Mahoney of Florida. Police did not provide their hometowns.

The first outburst came during Sen. Dianne Feinstein's opening statement. A man in the back of the room interrupted the California Democrat's remarks by shouting: "Senator! What about the unborn!" He called abortion "genocide."

Sotomayor briefly turned her head toward family and friends seated in the front row as the first protester was taken away and his shouts faded.

The initial episode prompted a warning by the Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that no displays for or against the nominee from observers would be tolerated.

McCorvey was among a group that had been in seats reserved for the public. She began shouting as the group was escorted out so a new group could enter. Another man protested in Spanish.

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Franken had been praising Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., a longtime Judiciary Committee member who is ill and was not at the hearing.

"We'll show respect to everybody who is here, we will show respect to everybody, including to Judge Sotomayor, to the senators on both sides of the aisle, and we will have order in this room," Leahy said in another attempt to stop the disruptions.

Those arrested were charged with unlawful conduct-disruption of Congress.

Anti-abortion activists demonstrated outside the Hart Senate Office Building throughout the hearing.

McCorvey used Jane Roe as a pseudonym when she filed her lawsuit in 1970, challenging a strict anti-abortion law in Texas. She identified herself a decade later and wrote a book, "I am Roe: My Life, Roe V. Wade and Freedom of Choice."

She switched sides in 1995 when the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue moved next door to the Dallas women's clinic where she worked. She became friends with one of the anti-abortion leaders and became a Christian.

She began working for Operation Rescue. She even started her own "Roe No More Ministry."

In another high-profile demonstration in May, McCorvey was among at least 27 people arrested on trespassing charges when President Barack Obama spoke at the University of Notre Dame.

Comments

[gatogato]

M C Cor vey brought this on in Roe v wade. So by reasonings of the the movement she is with now all the bl ood of the ab ort ed are on her hands.

[BeulahBell]

A woman should have a right to an abortion-- as long as she agrees to a historectomy during the procedure. It's called "paying the piper".

[gatogato]

Idiotic. Rape and incest victims should pay the piper? Sick and un christian as ever I have seen.

[gatogato]

rape and incest victims should be forced to have hysterectomies and pay the piper?

[gatogato]

disgusting, vile, and as unchristian as ever I have seen.

[gatogato]

P I G

[gatogato]

Wisdom from the high forehead set. "All in the Family" isn't a TV sitcom it is your marital status.

[MadDemocrat]

Here is a sad lesson in Democratic, left wing hypocrisy: You claim to support life by opposing wars, opposing capital punishment, supporting human rights across the world. Somehow though, you put the irresponsibility of a woman's actions (unprotected sex, getting drunk and knocked up, sleeping around instead of controlling herself) over the life of an unborn baby. You argue at great length about when life starts, you call the baby a "fetus" to dehumanize what it actually is. You hide behind a woman's right to choose even though she is choosing to stop a heart beat and snuffing out what would become a living, breathing human. Babies are fully formed at 8 weeks, a heart starts beating at a mere 18 days. A woman's womb is supposed to be the most warm, secure and safe place in the world for a developing human. Yet somehow you support dousing it and burning it with saline solution or worse yet pulling it apart limb from limb with a forceps and yanking it out of the mother. Hello kind world. I understand how the people who believe God is a joke don't care - they have no one to answer to and will undoubtedly be sorely surprised someday. However, the vast majority of us do believe in a higher power that will hold us accountable some day. Do you want to chance being on the wrong side of this issue?

[Omoishinji]

This is strange. Why would Norma McCorvey change to become a support of the anti-abortion movement? Even after becoming a Christian again, one would assume that she would continue to support the rights of a woman to choose. Or, at least be an advocate to educating people about safe sexual behavior.

[gatogato]

Why, by the reasoning of her new group she is responsible for all the dead fetuses

[godlessliberal]

What bugs me the most about these so called "pro lifers" is their hypocrisy. They claim to value life yet they deride women who choose to have their babies and have to go on welfare. They want the governement to force unwanted pregnancies but they don't want the government to provide healthcare to those who cannot afford it. How many people in our country die because they do not have adequate healthcare? If you truly value life doesn't prolonging the life of a living, breathing human being matter just as much as the value of an unborn fetus?

[gatogato]

They are not pro life. They are anti choice.

[ALittleClarity]

Then you would be pro death.

[ALittleClarity]

No you have it incorrect. It is women who purposely get pregnant as a means to have more welfare because they have more children. No one is upset that they had the baby.

[gatogato]

You are one of these fake Christians. Hope you like fire. You will be at that door.

[Midnightbreeze]

I doubt the constitution gives anyone the right to privacy. Abortion became legal only because of the enormous backing. If somebody was busted for in-home poker parties, or even prostitution, what are the chances that "privacy" is going to save them? Roe V Wade never did anything to advance privacy, it's mostly a selective charade that has to be defended through brute force. Just don't say you have a right to privacy because you never did.

[bushgirlsgone]

.

Of course it does: The Fourth Amendment. It protects people from search & seizures of places and items in which an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy -- his or her person, clothing, purse, luggage, vehicle, house, apartment, hotel room, and place of business, to name a few examples.

Too bad for Larry Craig that Men's Public Restrooms are exempt.

[HPdevotee]

"The court rested these conclusions on a determination that there is a constitutional right to privacy, guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade

Doctor/patient privilege also falls under the privacy 'charade' as well as access to your medical records.

[bushgirlsgone]

:)

[MsLiz]

I doubt that you are a scholar.

[Leslib]

All I know is that this country would be much worse off if we went back to coathangers and back alleys. If more people minded their own darned business and didn't try to run other people's lives we'd be a heckuva a lot better off.

[ikenneth]

Another "Joe the plumber" tactic by the GOP. She will be yesterday's news

[LastTexasRose]

I always find it very ironic that many of the Right-to-Lifers are also strong supporters of Israel.
John Hagee is one example, very anti-abortion, very pro-Israel.

I always wonder how they manage to defend everything Israel does, yet also claim to be pro-life?

Does it not count as "murder" if the fetus killed is in the womb of a woman from Gaza?

How do the Pro-Israel Pro-Lifers feel about the 19,544 legal abortions performed just in one year, 2007, in Israel?

[bushgirlsgone]

The rationale for formally designating Israel a Jewish state – as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now demands – rests on three religious-political pillars: God’s purported covenant with Moses instructing the ancient Israelites to conquer the land, the injustice of the Roman-era Diaspora that supposedly removed them centuries later, and the brutal persecution of European Jews in the Holocaust.

Yet, two of these pillars – Moses conveying God’s covenant to the Israelites and the Roman Diaspora – appear based on almost no historical reality, the stuff of legend and possibly even lies that crumble under any serious scrutiny.

[texasteph12570]

you on the left preach diversity and peace and love and claim cons are racist bigots sexist and hatemongers.

have you read the vitriol flowing from these posts?

i guess thats why your inclusiveness is just a sham and a lie. thats why you always knead everyone in a racial, sexual, gender specific group, and separate each of us by our outward, superficial, appearances.
i thought mlk preached a colorblind society?

hypocrite

[Deidroni]

Back in the '60's right wingers cried, "love it or leave it" to Americans that didn't like the laws (or the war). I say the same thing to those abortion haters, "love it or leave it" and go to Mexico, where abortion is illegal. They'll feel right at home!

[socialdemocracy1968]

She's the Darth Vader of the abortion rights movement. :D

[MsLiz]

Clever!

[jweider]

"She switched sides in 1995 when the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue moved next door to the Dallas women's clinic where she worked. She became friends with one of the anti-abortion leaders and became a Christian."

Further proof that children should not be allowed around bibble thumpers.
Their stupid.ty is contagious.

[thatenglishteacher]

There might be an alternative explanation to this. Have you considered that she is correct? Have you considered that she needed the hope and healing offered by forgiveness for an error that cost a life? Your way of thinking certainly can't help her. Anger would only turn the pain into bitterness and self-loathing. Good for her!

[benedictcyn]

but she had the baby, didn't she? Which she then neglected to raise herself?

[RedGinger]

Yes, let's keep our children away from bible thumpers.

[sanang]

I agree about "Bible Thumpers", they can screw up more things.

[Guitarjelly]

Look, the law has NEVER recognized a fetus as a human being, ever. Even in old england (where our laws come from), waaaay waaaay back (before America even existed!) they thought it was kind of a person at the quickening (you could be killed for intentionally killing a "child" after the quickening era). So, congratulations, you, in the 21rst century, are MORE conservative than people in history...in OLD england. Most states, before Roe, had anti-abortion laws, but it was not murder as murder is "the intentional killing of human being", and babies, according to the law, are not human beings until they are physically born, because that is a "bright line" by which to Judge things like criminal penalty. So, if you want to change all this, just remember that you want to appoint activist judges who want to change the deepest roots of our judicial system.

[thatenglishteacher]

It is difficult to make laws that are in alignment with science. Now that we know so much more about fetal development and genetics the laws logically and morally must be updated. If RvW were tried today it would not be decided the same way. This is what I think is so scary to pro-abortion advocates. Even science is against their position.

[HPdevotee]

With all the scientific gains they have yet to be able to define 'personhood'. It would seem, in fact, that the more we know the further away that definition becomes. Science is the pro-choicers ally.

[MsLiz]

You state opinion as if it were fact. And if you are truly an English teacher, wouldn't you capitalize English?

A fetus born at 25 weeks might be viable today, when it was not viable in 1973. However the legal analysis still applies. In the first trimester, the state has no interest, but the state has a progressively greater interest in the second and third trimesters.

There are no "pro-abortion advocates" except in the minds of those who seek to criminalize the procedure. The debate is not over whether there will be abortions, but whether there will be criminal procedures for anyone who performs abortions in a safe manner.

[jaslyn]

I find these right to lifers are generally more concerned about the unborn than they are about those that are already here. They seem to be much more expendable to them, as they have no qualms about bombing abortion clinics, and are pro war.

[LorettaSingbiel]

"I find these right to lifers are generally more concerned about the unborn" ...

Not all unborn. Several bloggers objected to illegal aliens giving birth in our emergency rooms ... I suppose the alley behind the hospital would meet with their approval?