AKA Jane Roe
In this point of time, it is expected that you have already read the news: in Nick Sweeney’s documentary “AKA Jane Roe,” Norma McCorvey, also known as “Jane Roe” and the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, made a “death-bed confession” on camera. After she famously switched from pro-choice to pro-life, she exposes that she was paid to be a representative for the pro-life movement.
They were not spontaneous as they were advertised; instead they were remorseful and accepted Jesus into her heart. Her memorial had become so politically motivated by pro-life groups who used her as a weapon against abortion rights that Philip “Flip” Benham of Operation Rescue which baptized McCorvey in a backyard swimming pool gave a rousing political speech at it.
At the end of “AKA Jane Doe,” when asked if she felt like a “trophy” to the pro-life movement, McCorvey near death replies, “Of course I was. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say I’m a good actress. Of course, I’m not acting now.”
Which one is Norma? Is it the young woman who allowed two lawyers to use her story as an example in their court case? The young woman who let’s not forget this part never actually got that abortion; still hasn’t all these years later? Or was McCorvey the advocate working at an abortion clinic? Was she the repentant McCorvey speaking at memorials for the murdered unborn? No wonder people are confused about her flip-flops.
That confusion is what makes “AKA Jane Roe,” filmed over 2017, the year before her death, such a fascinating watch. Those interviewees who are rock-solid in their convictions don’t come off well here; often they are the same people who used her for their own pro-choice or pro-life ends, then quickly shelved her when she went off-script. It’s the conflicted ones, the ambivalent ones, the pained ones here in “AKA Jane Roe,” and Sweeney should be commended for his interviewing skills. For the most part, his subjects are honest especially when they’re “telling on” themselves.
There’s Charlotte Taft, the abortion activist who says bluntly: “[McCorvey] was not the poster girl that would have been helpful to the pro-choice movement.” It’s an amazing admission. In 1989, 300,000 protestors gathered in Washington D.C. to march for abortion rights. Jessica Lange made a speech; so did Whoopi Goldberg; so did Gloria Steinem. McCorvey there and no longer anonymous wasn’t invited to speak. These middle-class women didn’t know what to do with a trash-talking working-class wild card like McCorvey. Famous attorney and women’s rights advocate Gloria Allred saw how McCorvey was getting sidelined; she swooped in and thrust McCorvey back into the spotlight.
Sweeney captures the raucous humor of McCorvey. There are surprises, like McCorvey reciting Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy in its entirety as she is wheeled around a public park. He also interviews two important figures on the evangelical right. There’s Flip Benham, a frankly charismatic wolf in sheep’s clothing, a snake-oil salesman if ever there was one. He set up an Operation Rescue office next door to the abortion clinic where McCorvey worked; his tactical patience worked like a charm.
McCorvey found the belonging in the pro-life movement she hadn’t found in the pro-choice movement. You’d have to walk in her shoes: not wanted by her parents, neglected and abused, sexually molested by a relative, tossed to the wolves at a very young age. Is it any wonder that she would have soaked up the attention of a group who embraced her wholeheartedly, supporting her financially? And now we know she was paid to be there. Can you blame her for wanting that money? The cost was her relationship with Connie, her partner of many decades; Benham forced “Miss Connie” and “Miss Norma” (as he calls them) to end their relationship. It’s heartbreaking.
The key interview is with Reverend Rob Schenck, who stood at her side at those pro-life events, who now with admirable honesty expresses ambivalence and even horror at what he did to her. Other than McCorvey and Connie, he is the most heartfelt presence onscreen: “We were playing her,” he says of Norma, bluntly; “what we did with Norma was highly unethical.”
In re-enactments that open “AKA Jane Roe,” Sweeney portrays different events in McCorvey’s childhood and young adulthood; they aren’t particularly well-done and add nothing to telling the story (especially because the device is dropped early on). We don’t need to see a hand picking up a phone at the same time someone says, “The phone rang.” The breathless, cliffhanger-tone set up in the first scene where McCorvey announces she has a “death-bed confession” is also unnecessary; the information is explosive enough to stand on its own.
By and large, McCorvey’s story is well-known. “AKA Jane Roe” brings us into the battles behind the scenes, and allows us to get to know the woman at the center of it. What she did and why she did it will continue to be argued over.
But, as her taciturn life partner, Connie, said: Even with Norma’s pro life activities, “She saved a lot of women. She will always be Jane Roe.”
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