The Anti-Climatic Documentary "AKA Jane Doe."

     You've no doubt heard about it by now. Norma McCorvey, A.K.A. Jane Doe from the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe V. Wade, supposedly recanted her conversion to the pro-life cause. In the new FX documentary entitle AKA Jane Doe, McCorvey, who had converted to Christianity in 1995 and became a leading figure in the pro-life movement, told the filmmakers on her deathbed that she did not actually have a change of heart about abortion. She said it was "no skin of my ass" if a woman wanted to have an abortion. Much of the hype around this documentary focused on one topic: the implication that Norma McCorvey was paid to become a pro-life figurehead. 

     Having watch the documentary, however, the hype doesn't match the delivery. In fact, to be perfectly honest, the documentary had precious little to do with McCorvey's pro-life activism at all. The big moment where it was revealed that pro-life organizations had paid her for her activism was rather feeble. A former pro-life activist preacher states they paid her for her activism, and then a couple of numbers flash across the screen. Unlike all the op-eds and opinion pieces that portrayed this as scandalous, the documentary itself glossed over it with relative dismissiveness. McCorvey says they told her what to say, and she said it. OK, so like speech writers? Nothing particularly new there either.

     This documentary was not about the pro-life movement, nor about Roe v. Wade, nor even about abortion, really. This documentary was about Norma McCorvey, and to that end I believe this was a good documentary. I genuinely believe this documentary will do little to change anyone's view on abortion, and I do not believe the filmmakers had any such plan in mind. I may be wrong, but I just didn't see it. This is a documentary about Norma McCorvey and all the flaws and contradictions she brought with her.

     Norma McCorvey's life was full of all those twists and turns that make truth stranger than fiction, and the fact that she never fit in with any particular social norm speaks just as much to the social norms as to her own life. Can we appreciate, for instance, the comic irony that she was sent to an all-girls school to help reform her of her lesbian inclinations? Can we appreciate the tragic irony that she lied and said she was raped to get an abortion, even as her husband beat her for getting pregnant? That McCorvey is a contradictory figure only highlights the contradictions of the cultural and legal milieu she lived in.

     The contradictions keep coming. She wanted an abortion, and never had an abortion. She was the central figure for abortion rights, and yet abortion rights advocates had to marginalize her in order to keep their messaging. And then she converted, she switched sides! And a strange thing happened. She had to renounce her lesbianism, all-the-while she kept living with her lesbian partner. What's up with that? She became a pro-life advocate and a prize for the pro-life movement. But now the twist of this documentary comes: she didn't believe it. She was doing her thing to be an activist, but her activism was, what? A show, maybe?

     And yet, I didn't walk away from this documentary thinking her activism was a show. I didn't walk away thinking there were any scams or scandals. I walked away with one more piece of Norma McCorvey's life, full of uniquely human contradictions that defy rational explication. I don't think it was all for show, or money. Norma McCorvey was swept up into a social/political issue much bigger than herself. She became a central figure by opportunism. But opportunism itself is not the same as faking, nor the same as putting on a show. When people get swept into issues so much larger than themselves, a whirlwind ensues. So when an abused, pregnant, heteromarried, lesbian housewife goes from wanting an abortion, to becoming the face of all abortion, can we expect anything other than a whirlwind? 

     In summary, I genuinely believe that this documentary will not change anyone's minds on the topic of abortion, nor do I think it lives up to the media hype. But, this film did what it set out to do. It portrayed Norma McCorvey as a person, in all her flaws and contradictions, as an individual who was probably better off being an individual than a figurehead.