The half-sister of the baby at the center of the landmark Roe v. Wade case has said she understands why she never met their mom before she died – after her sister came forward to reveal her identity following decades of secrecy.
Melissa Mills, the eldest daughter of Norma McCorvey – the woman known as Jane Roe – told CBS Mornings she believes it was ‘too much’ for her half-sister Shelley Lynn Thornton to come face-to-face with their birth mom.
‘Shelley never met her – I think it was just too much. And I understand that, I mean she wanted to abort her,’ said Mills.
Mills also claimed it was McCorvey’s ‘sick sense of humor’ which led her to tell Thornton she should thank her for not aborting her all those years ago.
Mills was McCorvey’s first of three children – all girls – and was adopted by McCorvey’s mom Mary, making her the only child who grew up with their biological mom in her life.
Melissa Mills, the half-sister of the baby at the center of the landmark Roe v. Wade case, told CBS Mornings she understands why she never met their mom before she died
Shelley Lynn Thornton (pictured), a 51-year-old mother-of-three, has come forward to reveal she is the baby at the center of Roe v. Wade
McCorvey had a second daughter, Jennifer, who was adopted by a couple in Dallas.
Then, in 1970, when McCorvey, then 22, unmarried and living in Dallas, Texas, learned she was pregnant for a third time she filed a lawsuit under the name ‘Jane Roe’ to be able to have an abortion.
At the time, abortion was illegal except for where the mother’s life was at risk. But McCorvey never got the abortion.
The suit, which came to define reproductive rights across America, rumbled on until 1973.
By this time, McCorvey had given birth to the baby, given her up for adoption and the toddler was two-and-a-half and living with new parents.
The identity of the baby remained a secret for decades until Thornton, a 51-year-old mother-of-three, came forward to reveal she is the child who anti-abortion supporters dubbed ‘the ‘Roe baby’ in journalist Joshua Prager’s new book ‘The Family Roe: An American Story’ – an adapted excerpt of which was published in The Atlantic Thursday.
Thornton, who grew up with adoptive parents who didn’t believe in abortion, said she didn’t know who her biological mother was until she was 18.
Thornton told Prager she then had a difficult relationship with her biological mother and never met her in person before she died in 2017.
She recalled a heated conversation in 1994 when McCorvey called her to say she and her long-term partner Connie wanted to visit her, according to The Atlantic.
Thornton recalled that she asked her birth mom to be ‘discreet’ with her partner in front of her young son.
‘How am I going to explain to a three-year-old that not only is this person your grandmother, but she is kissing another woman?’ she recalled, per the book.
Mills also claimed it was their mom Norma McCorvey’s ‘sick sense of humor’ which led her to tell Thornton she should thank her for not aborting her
Mills broke down in tears as she revealed McCorvey suffered abuse over the Supreme Court case. ‘People would call her a killer, they’d call her Satan,’ she said
Thornton said McCorvey shouted at her and told her she should be grateful to her for not aborting her.
‘I was like, ‘What?! I’m supposed to thank you for getting knocked up… and then giving me away,” she told Prager.
‘I told her I would never, ever thank her for not aborting me.’
Mills told CBS she put that encounter down to McCorvey’s ‘pretty harsh’ and ‘sick’ humor and that her mom had been ‘mad’ at her daughter.
‘Mom had a sick sense of humor,’ said Mills.
‘Her humor was pretty harsh and she was mad at Shelley because Shelley wouldn’t do a DNA test and when Shelley wouldn’t it kind of made her mad.’
Mills told CBS she also didn’t learn McCorvey was the woman known as Jane Roe – or that she had two half-sisters – until her teens.
‘I didn’t think of her as a mother figure. I thought of her as as sister as that was how our relationship was,’ she said.
She said she remembers her mom being ‘really funny… the life of the party’ but ‘not everybody is meant to be a mother’ and she ‘couldn’t look after herself, much less anybody else.’
‘Not everybody is meant to be a mother – I didn’t expect that of her,’ she said.
‘She was the mother she could be.’
Mills maintained a relationship with her biological mom (pictured together) until her 2017 death. McCorvey spent the last few years of her life in an assisted living facility in Dallas near to where Melissa and her daughter live
She continued: ‘We were all given up for adoption but my grandparents adopted me.
‘And the other two were given up at birth. She couldn’t look after herself much less anybody else.’
Mills recalled being reunited with Jennifer and Shelley for the first time in 2013.
‘We only had 24 hours together and it was very short and we got as much in as we could,’ she said.
Mills broke down in tears as she revealed her own absence of a mother figure pushed her to be the best mom she could be when she had her own children.
‘I guess when you want something you do it,’ she said of her stable family life, adding that she is most proud of ‘my kids.’
But, despite her mother’s troubles, Mills broke down in tears as she said she wanted to protect McCorvey.
‘I didn’t want anybody to hurt her,’ she said.
‘As I felt that even though she was strong, she was fragile.’
Mills revealed McCorvey suffered abuse over her role in the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion for women in America.
‘People would call her a killer, they’d call her Satan, they’d call her all kinds of terrible things,’ she said. ‘It was cruel.’
Mills said she believes this abuse drove her mom to switch from a pro-choice to a pro-life stance later in life.
‘She felt guilty and people made her feel bad for the part and the role that she played with the r v w case and all the babies that were aborted through the years,’ she said.
The Atlantic revealed that Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, is the youngest daughter of McCorvey in an adapted excerpt from journalist Joshua Prager’s new book ‘The Family Roe: An American Story’ (above), out September 14
Norma McCorvey (left) and her attorney Gloria Allred (right) hold hands as they leave the Supreme Court building in Washington after sitting in while the court listened to arguments in a Missouri abortion case in 1989
McCorvey, who revealed her identity as Jane Roe days after the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, became a pro-choice figurehead at abortion rights rallies alongside her attorney Gloria Allred in the wake of the ruling.
Later in life, she became a born-again Christian and she switched to a pro-life stance.
However, in a deathbed confession first released in 2020 documentary ‘AKA Jane Roe’, McCorvey claimed she faked her conversion in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments by an anti-abortion group.
Two religious leaders backed her claims, with one admitting ‘the jig is up.’
Mills also claimed that, despite the landmark abortion law being born from her birth mom’s lawsuit, McCorvey wasn’t told when the law passed.
‘Yeah, quite a bit before I think and they didn’t even call her. Mom didn’t even know that the abortion law had passed,’ she said.
‘They didn’t even include her on any of that so she really wasn’t involved – they didn’t want her to be.
‘They said she really wasn’t the type of person that they needed even though they used her case.’
When asked ‘what does Norma McCorvey mean to you?’, Mills replied: ‘That’s my mom.’
Mills maintained a relationship with her biological mom until her death.
McCorvey spent the last few years of her life in an assisted living facility in Dallas near to where Melissa and her daughter live. She died from heart failure in 2017 aged 69.
Thornton, meanwhile, never met her birth mother in person before she died.
She told Prager she had decided to speak out after more than half a century because she wanted to free herself from the ‘secrets and lies.’
McCorvey in 1998. Shelley Lynn Thornton, 51, has come forward to reveal that she is the youngest daughter of McCorvey – the woman known as Jane Roe
‘Secrets and lies are, like, the two worst things in the whole world. I’m keeping a secret, but I hate it,’ she said, in an adapted excerpt from Prager’s new book ‘The Family Roe: An American Story’, published in The Atlantic.
‘I want everyone to understand that this is something I’ve chosen to do.’
Thornton said her views on abortion are now complex, saying ‘I don’t understand why it’s a government concern’ but revealing that when she fell pregnant at 20 she decided abortion was ‘not part of who I was.’
‘My association with Roe started and ended because I was conceived,’ she told Prager, whose book is published September 14.
Thornton had always known she was adopted and had longed to make contact with her birth mother, she told Prager.
But she said she has suffered from depression and anxiety for years – something she attributes at least in part to knowing she was ‘not wanted’ by her birth mom.
‘When someone’s pregnant with a baby and they don’t want that baby, that person develops knowing they’re not wanted,’ said Thornton, in the book excerpt obtained by The Atlantic.
Thornton was the only child of her adopted parents Ruth Schmidt and Billy Thornton, who – after being unable to conceive their own child – reached out to attorney Henry McCluskey to help them adopt.
The couple took their baby home at three days old in June 1970, with no knowledge that she was at the center of the high-profile lawsuit, revealed Prager in the book excerpt.
Thornton told Prager that neither she nor her adoptive parents learned she was the infant dubbed the ‘Roe baby’ by the anti-abortion community until almost two decades later, reported The Atlantic.
In 1989, McCorvey publicly spoke out to say she wanted to track down her third child.
The National Enquirer carried out an investigation with the help of a woman named Toby Hanft, who previously gave her own daughter up for adoption and was now working to connect birth mothers with the children they gave up.
Hanft managed to identify and track down Thornton, who was 18 at the time, according to Prager.
When Thornton found out her mom was Jane Roe, she said she knew little about the Supreme Court case other than it ‘made it OK for people to go out and be promiscuous’, according to the book excerpt published in The Atlantic.
‘The only thing I knew about being pro-life or pro-choice or even Roe v. Wade was that this person had made it OK for people to go out and be promiscuous,’ she told Prager.
She said she was left ‘shaking all over and crying’ following the bombshell revelation.
The Enquirer published its article in 1989 revealing the so-called ‘Roe baby’ had been found but, at her request, did not reveal Thornton’s identity and she didn’t meet with McCorvey.
Two years after the Enquirer article was published and as an unmarried 20-year-old, Thornton told Prager she discovered she was pregnant.
Norma McCorvey aka ‘Jane Roe’ (left) and her attorney Gloria Allred at the Supreme Court in 1989
She was already planning to marry her partner Doug but she was ‘not at all’ eager to become a mother and Doug suggested they consider an abortion, she said, according to the excerpt in The Atlantic.
Thornton said her ties to the Roe v. Wade case had caused her to rethink her views on abortion.
When the Enquirer had tracked her down, her adoptive mom Ruth told the journalist ‘we don’t believe in abortion,’ she told Prager.
The publication had then described her as pro-life because, The Atlantic reported, she had told the journalist ‘she couldn’t see herself having an abortion.’
Thornton told Prager she was unhappy with this description because she regarded pro-life as ‘a bunch of religious fanatics going around and doing protests.’
However, she also didn’t identify as pro-choice because ‘Norma was pro-choice, and it seemed to Shelley that to have an abortion would render her no different than Norma,’ Prager wrote in the book extract.
Thornton told Prager, in the excerpt obtained by The Atlantic, that she had come to the conclusion that religion and politics should not play a part in abortion law.
‘I guess I don’t understand why it’s a government concern,’ she said.
But she realized that abortion was ‘not part of who I was’ and decided to keep the baby – a son – and ensure he felt wanted.
‘I knew what I didn’t want to do,’ she said in the book excerpt.
‘I didn’t want to ever make him feel that he was a burden or unloved.’
Thornton and Doug had two more children – daughters born in 1999 and 2000.
The revelation about the identity of the baby at the center of the landmark case comes as Roe v. Wade and the debate around abortion laws have taken center stage in the US once again. A group of protesters gather in Times Square, NYC, Saturday to rally against the new Texas law
Texas Governor Greg Abbott (pictured) signed a new abortion law in May which took effect Wednesday
The revelation of the identity of the baby at the center of the landmark case comes as Roe v. Wade and the debate around abortion laws have taken center stage in the US once again.
Last week, Texas implemented a new law that effectively undercut the 1973 ruling and saw the introduction of the most extreme abortion law across the country.
The law, dubbed the ‘Texas Heartbeat Act’, bans abortions from when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically after six weeks of pregnancy – before many women even know they are pregnant.
The ban does not make exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest, with the only exception being to save the life of the mother.
Rather than enforcement by state officials, the new law gives private citizens the right to sue women who get abortions or anyone who helps them get abortions for $10,000.
The law took effect last Wednesday when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of upholding it and denied a request from abortion providers to block it.
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