"Now it was time for Coffee and Weddington to tell McCorvey what she could do for them. They told her they were looking for a woman to be a plaintiff in an abortion suit. They asked Norma if she were aware that many people wanted to change the abortion laws. Norma was not alone in her attempts to obtain a legal abortion, nor was she alone in her failure to get one. Many women who needed abortions found themselves unable to obtain one and were forced into illegal ones. Because abortion was illegal, no one knew for sure how many women terminated their pregnancies, but one study found that the women surveyed ended between one-fifth and one-fourth of all their pregnancies. Only eight to ten thousand legal abortions were done each year in the United States, while experts guessed that between a million and a million and a half abortions were done annually. Women who got illegal abortions took a much greater risk than those who were able to obtain legal ones. Some women got to competent illegal abortionists, Weddington said, but many more suffered at the hands of uncaring, unscrupulous, illegal practitioners. While she was looking for someone to perform an abortion. McCorvey told the two women, she had heard many horror stories about what happened if a woman went to the wrong kind of abortionist. That was why she had not been able to go through with the surgery. No licensed doctor would agree to perform the operation, and although one abortionist had offered to do it for $500, he did not have a medical license, and she was afraid to let him touch her. Weddington asked Norma how she had felt when she could not get an abortion. Norma replied that she was angry at being forced to have a child whom she did not want and could not care for. Sarah said that she and Coffee were angry too, and that they wanted to help women in her plight. That was why they needed her help."