The Woman Behind Roe V. Wade Got Paid To Embrace Antiabortion Movement, New Documentary Reveals

A scrappy, abused 10-year-old girl who robbed a Texas gas station in 1957 and ran away to hide in an Oklahoma City motel would grow up to change American history.

“I am a rough woman, born into pain and anger and raised mostly by myself,” wrote Norma McCorvey, in one of her two memoirs, “I Am Roe.”

McCorvey — better known as Jane Roe in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the United States — lived a tempestuous 69 years that included alcoholism, drug addiction, abuse, rape, sexual experimentation, reform school, three pregnancies, jobs as a roller-skating car hop and carnival barker, religious rebirth, and, it is now revealed, bribery.

In a documentary about her life, “AKA Jane Roe,” which premieres Friday on FX, she made the deathbed confession in 2017 that her later-life fight against abortion rights was all an act that she was paid handsomely for by antiabortion activists.