Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Breaking news: "Jane Roe" Norma McCorvey arrested at Sotomayor hearing


From the Washington Post, within the hour:

The woman at the center of the Supreme Court's landmark abortion rights ruling was arrested today at the confirmation hearing for Sonia Sotomayor among a wave of anti-abortion protesters who lined the sidewalks outside the Senate office buildings and several of whom made it into the hearing room and disrupted in an attempt to disrupt the proceedings....

Norma McCorvey, 61, of TX, better known as "Jane Roe" in the famous Roe v. Wade case from January 1973, was arrested after she and another protester started yelling during the opening statement of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).... McCorvey... eventually become a leading opponent of the procedure....

McCorvey and Francis Mahoney, 68, of FL were charged with unlawful conduct for disrupting Congress, the 3rd and 4th such arrests the police made during the more than 5-hour proceedings. McCorvey was part of the group of protesters outside the Hart Senate Office Building throughout the day, a gathering led by Randall Terry, the former head of Operation Rescue.

The last 2 rows of the hearing room were reserved for about 50 members of the public, who rotate into the hearings for short intervals and then must be escorted out to allow other citizens to view the historic proceedings. McCorvey and Mahoney were part of a group being escorted out as Franken was praising the service of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MS), a staunch supporter of the Roe decision....

When McCorvey and Mahoney started shouting, they were quickly removed from the room. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Judiciary Committee chairman, banged the gavel on the crowd for the 3rd time today.

"Officers, please remove whoever is causing the disturbance," Leahy said. "Again, as Senator Sessions and I have said, this is a meeting of the United States Senate. We'll show respect to everybody who is here, we will show respect to everybody, including to Judge Sotomayor, to the Senators on both sides of the aisle, and we will have order in this room."


From the Journal Sentinal blog:

Norma McCorvey... began to scream at Sotomayor that she was "wrong " for her perceived abortion rights views.

"You're wrong Sotomayor," she said. "You're wrong."...

Earlier, she was among a small group of anti-abortion activists who protested Sotomayor's confirmation outside the Hart Senate Office building. The group lingered on a sidewalk nearby holding up signs saying "Stop All Abortions." Other signs depicted graphic images of what appeared to be aborted fetuses. One woman wore a black judicial robe and held a sickle in protest of what demonstrators perceived as Sotomayor's abortion rights views.

"I'm here to overturn Roe and defeat Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court," McCorvey said earlier in the day. "She's unworthy of the position. She's Catholic. She's even unworthy of taking communion because of her pro-abortion stance."

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