
‘Roe vs. Wade’ Plaintiff Was Paid to Switch Sides in Abortion Fight, Doc Reveals - hnyk
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/19/roe-vs-wade-plaintiff-was-paid-to-switch-sides-in-abortion-fight-documentary-reveals/#1b4e67ae7c08
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johnnyo
This is a good reminder that sometimes the plaintiff in a major decision like
this often doesn’t have the strongest ideological link to the issue at hand,
but the facts of their specific case made it the best exemplar to bring before
the Supreme Court.

If you read about the plaintiffs in famous cases like this and others, the
defendant is much different than the picture we imagine.

For example, In Plessy vs Ferguson, the railroad company opposed the idea of
racial segregation of rail cars, because it meant they had to spend more money
on cars for their train, and they (along with others) recruited Plessy and
staged the arrest of Plessy in hopes of getting the law overturned. They even
went so far as to inform the arresting party of the specific charges to bring
so they’d have the best case to challenge it.

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mirimir
> This is a good reminder that sometimes the plaintiff in a major decision
> like this often doesn’t have the strongest ideological link to the issue at
> hand ...

That's a misreading of TFA. It's not that she ever opposed abortion rights.
TFA makes it clear that the just did it for the money.

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7532yahoogmail
Which is what the guy said.

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mirimir
I get that. But I still think that there's a distinction between "not feel
strongly" and "be desperate".

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lidHanteyk
I wonder if there is a name for this sort of behavior, which seems common to
evangelical Christians, where older folks are coerced to question their
earlier works in life in order to try to effect some appearance of "deathbed
conversion" or similar. Famously, a similar happening occurred to Charles
Darwin while he was in decline [0].

There may be no good antidote for this. If Roe could not be unwavering in her
convictions, or could not maintain the optics of being unwavering, then who
possibly can? How could we better prevent evangelical Christians from lying
about these false recantations?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth,_Lady_Hope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth,_Lady_Hope)

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mcphage
> If Roe could not be unwavering in her convictions, or could not maintain the
> optics of being unwavering, then who possibly can?

Which convictions are you referring to specifically, since she showed both
sides?

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palad1n
The more I learn about what goes on in the world, the more and more I find out
how staged everything is.

