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Today in Labor History September 22, 1947: Norma McCorvey, American activist was born. She was the plaintiff in Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which legalized abortions in the U.S. She grew up in a poor, working-class family. At the age of ten, she robbed a gas station with a girlfriend and ran away to Oklahoma City, where they were arrested after a maid walked in on them and caught them kissing each other. She was declared a ward of the state and sent to a Catholic boarding school, and then State School for Girls in Gainesville, Texas from age 11 to 15. After that, she lived with her mother’s cousin, who repeated raped her. At 16, she married Woody McCorvey (age 23), but left him after he assaulted her, and not long after gave birth to her first child. After this, she developed a drug and alcohol problem. Her mother kidnapped her baby and reported Norma to the police for “abandoning” her baby. Later, she tricked Norma into signing adoption papers, giving her custody of the child. Later in her life, she became an Evangelical Christian, and then a Roman Catholic, and participated in the anti-abortion movement. However, before she died, she admitted that she had been paid to speak out against abortion. She had also accepted money to renounce her lesbian identity. This video clip is from the satirical film, Citizen Ruth, with Laura Dern portraying a McCorvey-like character.