The woman whose divorce case was twisted by her attorneys against her will to win a Supreme Court victory legalizing late-term abortion is gravely ill in an Atlanta area hospital, reports Priests for Life.
“Sandra Cano, a dear pro-life friend and the Doe of the Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court decision, is critically ill in a hospital outside of Atlanta,” the group wrote on its website Monday. “She has throat cancer, sepsis in her blood, and is in congestive heart failure. The doctors are saying she could die any time. Please pray that the Lord will bind the spirit of death and to give her life, abundant life, and complete and total healing.”
A later update posted to the site read in part: “Shortly after a request for prayer went out yesterday, Sandra’s condition improved slightly. She is still in critical condition and still has a long road ahead of her, but your prayers helped, and will continue to help her recover. Sandra is conscious and in a lot of pain. When she learned that so many people were lifting her up in prayer, she said: ‘I thank you all from the bottom of my heart and from the depth of my pain.’ She asks that everyone continue praying for her.”
Most people are familiar with Roe v. Wade, the case that made abortion legal in the U.S. until the point of viability. But fewer know about its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, which was decided the same day and formalized the “health of the mother” loophole that guarantees the right to an abortion right up until birth.
Cano, who was known as “Mary Doe” during the lawsuit, was just 22 years old when she became pregnant with her fourth child by her husband, who was in and out of jail. Two of her children were in foster care, and she was desperate to get them back, and to divorce her husband, whom she describes as a “terrible person.” She was too poor to afford a lawyer, so she reached out to Legal Aid for help. From that point on, she says, she was used as “a pawn” by attorneys who twisted what was meant to be a simple divorce and custody case into something much more sinister.
“Using my name and life, Doe v. Bolton falsely created the health exception that led to abortion on demand and partial birth abortion,” Cano testified before a Senate subcommittee in 2005. “How it got there is still pretty much a mystery to me. I only sought legal assistance to get a divorce from my husband and to get my children from foster care. I was very vulnerable: poor and pregnant with my fourth child, but abortion never crossed my mind. Although it apparently was utmost in the mind of the attorney from whom I sought help.”
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“I was a trusting person and did not read the papers put in front of me by my lawyer,” Cano wrote in a 2003 affidavit (PDF). She said she believed she was signing divorce papers, but that her attorney, Margie Pitts Hames, took advantage of her youth and ignorance to sneak in papers related to abortion.
“I did not even suspect that the papers related to abortion until one afternoon when my mother and my lawyer told me that my suitcase was packed to go to a hospital, and that they had scheduled an abortion for the next day,” Cano wrote. “I told both my mother and my lawyer that I would not have an abortion. Not then. Not ever.” Cano was later forced to flee the state to escape the pressure from her attorneys and her family to abort, only returning after her attorney and her mother promised they would not force her to have an abortion.
After the Doe case was decided, Cano felt tremendously guilty for her unwitting role in legalizing the murder of unborn children. “I never had an abortion,” Cano wrote, “but I know what it is like to feel responsible for one. I know what it is like to feel like a mother who helped terminate the life of her own child. After Doe v. Bolton was decided and I was told about my involvement, I felt responsible for the experiences to which the mothers and babies were being subjected. In a way, I felt that I was involved in the abortions – that I was somehow responsible for the lives of the children and the horrible experiences of their mothers.”
In 2003, Cano requested the Supreme Court retry her case on the grounds that it was based on a lie – she never wanted or sought an abortion, as her lawyers claimed. But the court refused to reopen the case – just as they did when Norma McCorvey, the “Roe” in Roe v. Wade, sought to have her case reheard.