"After hearing so much about McCorvey’s background, Weddington and Coffee became concerned that she might not be such a good plaintiff after all. Her life thus far-a high school dropout, married at sixteen, a daughter she did not have custody of, walking out on a visit with her daughter to join a carnival, her present hand-to-mouth existence-was a major problem. Another problem was the rape. In our talks, both Weddington and Coffee recalled that it was a delicate issue. Sensitive as the two women were to any woman’s claim that she had been raped- a claim that was too often ignored or, worse, challenged-they were also lawyers, trained to size up a potential witness’s credibility. And whatever had happened to Norma McCorvey, they did not feel that she would be a credible plaintiff in a rape case, let alone in an abortion case involving a rape. Coffee in a particular was struck by McCorbey’s lack of emotion when she described the rape at their first meeting. Some rape victims are stoic, even with the people who try to counsel or otherwise help them, but McCorvey’s remarkably unemotional recounting of how she had been raped made her lawyer uneasy. McCorvey was vague about the circumstances of the rape, and her story became more unclear and the details more bizarre with each retelling. She told Coffee and Weddington she had not gone to the police or filed nay kind of official report. Initially, she said she had been raped by one man; she later changed her story and claimed she had been gang-raped, sometimes by several men and her female companions, sometimes by a white, black, and Hispanic man, a highly unlikely combination to have been walking together down a Georgia country road late at night in 1969."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp.18-19
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the
1424 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Roe v. Wade →
Related Quotes
"Harry Blackmun questioned Weddington again on the issue of fetal personhood, as did Potter Stewart. They wanted her t…"
"In 1938, seven Justices heard a constitutional challenge to a federal ban on shipping adulterated milk in interstate …"
"The Court has simultaneously transformed judicially created rights like the right to abortion into preferred constitu…"
"Beyond these paltry authorities, the Court adds only the argument that we should not “encourage a kitchen-sink approa…"
"JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting. The procedural posture of this case l…"
"JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE BREYER and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting. The Court’s order is stunning. Presen…"
"By the time that Michael Taylor sent out his communiqué, pro-life lawyers had been preparing legal arguments in Roe a…"
"Lawyers for the states of both Georgia and Texas argued that abortion restrictions were appropriate because the state…"
"Pro-life lawyers had complained before about the poor quality of state attorney’s attempts to defend restrictive abor…"
"Ellen McCormack’s Long Island-based organization, Women for the Unborn, which now had 2,000 members, submitted a brie…"