Joshua Prager, 51, is one of the people who is most familiar with Roe v. Wade, the case that constitutionally enshrined the right to abortion in the United States in 1973. An investigative reporter specializing in characters who have been steamrollered by History, his book The Family Roe: An American Story caused a stir when it was published in September 2021, right around the time that Texas was passing its restrictive abortion legislation. The book, on which he worked for a decade, revealed the identity of Roe Baby, the daughter of Norma McCorvey, to whom the judge assigned the pseudonym Jane Roe during litigation for her right to an abortion, precisely, in… Texas.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The legal fight put up by McCorvey, who gave the baby up for adoption (today she is a woman named Shelley Lynn Thornton, as Prager discovered), reached the Supreme Court. This institution ruled in her favor in 1973 (seven to two) in what is usually defined as the most controversial decision in its history. But this honor could soon go to another decision currently at the draft stage in that same court involving Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization. This case pits a Mississippi clinic against the state, which in 2018 enacted a law contrary to the spirit that Roe consecrated constitutionally. If the final decision confirms what a document leaked by Politico revealed this Monday, five conservative judges will overturn a half-century precedent and split the United States in two in terms of women’s reproductive rights.
Prager answered EL PAÍS’ questions from his home in New Jersey, one day after learning about a draft whose contents, he says, have not surprised him “at all.”
Question. Although many suspected that the Supreme Court would go that way, the leaked draft opinion has caused a real earthquake…
Answer. It was enough to look at the arguments of the oral hearing. There are seven justices who we knew in advance which way they would vote [three conservatives, three progressives, and Chief Justice John Roberts]. The two unknowns were [the two justices appointed by Donald Trump] Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Kavanaugh basically spent the whole time talking about precedents that the court had previously overturned. And Justice Barrett spent much of her time talking about adoption as a viable alternative to abortion. So when you heard these two things over and over being said, it was pretty clear to my mind that at the very least they were going to cut Roe, but it looked to me like they were actually going to overturn Roe, although you never know, it still could change. It really could, drafts change.
