In some court cases, a fictitious name is used to protect one or both parties’ identities. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in America in 1973, Jane Roe, the plaintiff, was actually Norma McCorvey. (Henry Wade, the defendant, was the Dallas County District Attorney at the time.) Norma McCorvey no longer hides her identity as Jane Roe, and she has undergone a huge transformation since her pro-abortion days.

Raised in a poor, broken family, Norma McCorvey ran away from home at age 10 and spent several years in reform schools. She married at age 16. Her husband beat her severely when she told him she was pregnant, and their marriage ended shortly thereafter. Norma wanted to keep the baby, but her mother took the baby away from her against her will.

McCorvey later had an out-of-wedlock child whom she gave up for adoption. But when she again got pregnant out of wedlock, she decided she wanted an abortion. At age 21, she was poor, homeless, uneducated, an alcoholic, a drug user, and a lesbian. She was not in a good position to raise a child, and she did not want to give up another child for adoption.

Abortion was illegal then, but McCorvey was introduced to two feminist lawyers who decided to use her as a pawn in order to legalize abortion. They needed a plaintiff in order to challenge the Texas law prohibiting abortion, so they convinced McCorvey to sign on to Roe v. Wade.

McCorvey’s court case was not decided before the baby was due, so she gave the baby up for adoption. Eventually, Roe v. Wade reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and abortion was legalized in the United States. Several years later, McCorvey went public as "Jane Roe" and became the "poster girl" of the abortion movement. She once told a reporter, "This is the only thing I live for. I live, eat, breathe, think everything about abortion."

But McCorvey’s world began to change when Operation Rescue moved next door to the abortion clinic where she was working in Dallas. McCorvey had always thought of pro-life demonstrators as inhuman and fanatical people, but then she got to know some of the Operation Rescue volunteers that she saw nearly every day. One of these volunteers, Ronda Mackey, got very close to McCorvey after Mackey’s seven-year-old daughter, Emily, stole McCorvey’s heart. "Emily’s blatant affection, frequent hugs, and direct pursuit disarmed me," says McCorvey, who was afraid of bonding with children. Emily didn’t give McCorvey any compelling arguments for changing her ways; she "went straight for the heart," McCorvey says.

Ronda told Norma that she had almost aborted Emily under pressure from her family and her fiancé. Shortly after hearing this story, McCorvey saw the logo "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" on Ronda’s bumper sticker, which also had a red heart on it. She states, "All of a sudden, I saw Emily’s heart in that sticker, and it just about destroyed me when I realized that ‘my law’ … had almost snuffed out young Emily’s life."

Due to Emily’s persistence, McCorvey finally went to church with the Mackey family one day. During the sermon, she was moved to ask God’s forgiveness for her role in abortion and became a Christian. McCorvey still thought that abortion was okay during the first trimester, until she saw a fetal development poster in the Operation Rescue offices. She realized that even a tiny embryo was a baby and that therefore she could no longer work in an abortion clinic.

From that point on, McCorvey became an outspoken opponent of Roe v. Wade. She worked for Operation Rescue for two years until she began her own speaking ministry, Roe No More. In 1998, McCorvey entered the Catholic Church. By the grace of God, the former "poster girl" for abortion is now a well-known pro-life speaker who travels widely to tell her conversion story.

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