ChesusRice
Well-Known Member
Ms. McCorvey, 46, has written her life story, with Andy Meisler, in "I Am Roe: My Life, Roe v. Wade and Freedom of Choice" (HarperCollins, 1994, $23), which besides telling its own rough tale, documents the making of the most unlikely role model in the history of the women's movement.
Her grandmother was a prostitute and fortuneteller. Her father was a television repairman, her mother an alcoholic. Part Cajun, part Cherokee Indian, and raised as a Jehovah's Witness, Norma Leah Nelson was 10 when she took money from the gas station where she worked to run away from home. After that, her education came from reform schools until the ninth grade. By the time she was 15, she had been sexually assaulted by a nun and a male relative of her mother's. At 16, she married an itinerant steel worker, Woody McCorvey, who, she says, beat her. She left him and returned to her mother's house in Dallas with plans to raise her unborn child alone.
But after her daughter, Melissa, was born and Ms. McCorvey confided in her mother that her sexual preference was for women, she says, her mother kidnapped Melissa, banished Ms. McCorvey from the house and raised her granddaughter herself. Ms. McCorvey writes that when she was drunk, her mother tricked her into signing adoption papers, giving away custody.
What followed for her were years of alcohol and drug abuse, and jobs as varied as bartender and carnival barker. After an affair with a co-worker resulted in a second pregnancy when she was 19, she gave the baby up for adoption. (Abortion was illegal in Texas in the late 1960's, and she had no money to go elsewhere).
Her grandmother was a prostitute and fortuneteller. Her father was a television repairman, her mother an alcoholic. Part Cajun, part Cherokee Indian, and raised as a Jehovah's Witness, Norma Leah Nelson was 10 when she took money from the gas station where she worked to run away from home. After that, her education came from reform schools until the ninth grade. By the time she was 15, she had been sexually assaulted by a nun and a male relative of her mother's. At 16, she married an itinerant steel worker, Woody McCorvey, who, she says, beat her. She left him and returned to her mother's house in Dallas with plans to raise her unborn child alone.
But after her daughter, Melissa, was born and Ms. McCorvey confided in her mother that her sexual preference was for women, she says, her mother kidnapped Melissa, banished Ms. McCorvey from the house and raised her granddaughter herself. Ms. McCorvey writes that when she was drunk, her mother tricked her into signing adoption papers, giving away custody.
What followed for her were years of alcohol and drug abuse, and jobs as varied as bartender and carnival barker. After an affair with a co-worker resulted in a second pregnancy when she was 19, she gave the baby up for adoption. (Abortion was illegal in Texas in the late 1960's, and she had no money to go elsewhere).