‘Roe Baby’ Shelley Lynn Thornton Rejects Taking a Position on Abortion Debate: ‘I’m Not Going to Let Either Side Use Me’
Shelley Lynn Thornton, the woman whose very conception sparked one of the Supreme Court’s most significant legal rulings in U.S. history, is telling her story and making it clear she won’t take anyone’s side in the public debate over abortion.
After years of anonymity, Thornton was recently identified as the daughter of Norma McCorvey, the woman who challenged Texas’ restrictive abortion laws decades ago under the pseudonym of Jane Roe. McCorvey sought to abort Thornton during her pregnancy, but since the legal battle stretched on for years, Thornton was born and put up for adoption while McCorvey won the case of Roe V. Wade. This was the landmark Supreme Court decision that legally permitted women to have an abortion in the first trimester without undue government interference.
ABC News’ Linsey Davis spoke to Thornton for her first TV interview, where the conversation revolved around Thornton’s thoughts on her connection to the case. Thornton argued, however, that “it had nothing to do with me [because] I wasn’t the one who created this law. I’m not the one who created this movement.”
Thornton spoke of how she tried to ignore her connection to the case for years, but it loomed in the background of her life, and she was once tricked into meeting National Enquirer reporters who confronted her with her birth mother’s identity.
My whole thinking is that, ‘Oh God, everybody’s going to hate me because everyone’s going to blame me for abortion being legal.’ You know, it’s like ‘it’s all my fault,’ is pretty much what I was thinking. And that’s really hard to grasp when you’re in that kind of a situation and you’re just kind of like learning all of this stuff.
The public debate about abortion continues in light of Texas’ restrictive new laws against the procedure. Thornton said that she has her own opinion on abortion, but she won’t engage in that discourse, fearing both sides would seek to exploit her for their own argument.
“I don’t really talk about that just because I’m not going to let either side use me for their advantage,” Thornton said, “because that’s not me and — you know — find somebody else.”
Watch above, via ABC.
