The family Roe : an American story Cover Image

Book

The family Roe : an American story / Joshua Prager.

Summary:

"Despite her famous pseudonym, "Jane Roe," no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey (1947-2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundreds of hours with Norma, discovered her personal papers--a previously unseen trove--and witnessed her final moments. The Family Roe presents her life in full. Propelled by the crosscurrents of sex and religion, gender and class, it is a life that tells the story of abortion in America.... The Family Roe abounds in revelations not only about Norma and her children but about the broader "family connected to the case. Prager tells the stories of activists and bystanders alike whose lives intertwined with Roe. In particular, he introduces three figures as important as they are unknown: feminist lawyer Linda Coffee, who files the original Texas lawsuit yet now lives in obscurity; Curtis Boyd, a former fundamentalist Christian, today a leading provider of third-trimester abortions; and Mildred Jefferson, the first black female Harvard Medical School graduate, who became a pro-life leader with great secrets." --adapted from inside front jacket flap.

Record details

ISBN: 9780393247718
ISBN: 0393247716
Physical Description: xiv, 655 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), genealogical table ; 25 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, [2021]
Copyright: ©2021

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 627-636) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Part I. Sex and religion -- Part II. Three Texans -- Part III. Roe v. Wade -- Part IV. "The raw edges of human existence" -- Part V. Undue burden -- Part VI. Born again -- Part VII. Repercussion -- Part VIII. The family Roe.