Sandra Cano (left), Ann Scheidler, and Norma McCorvey at League-sponsored “Meet the Abortion Providers” conference, 1996
Sandra Cano, also known as Jane Doe from the Doe v. Bolton companion case to Roe v. Wade, which expanded legalized abortion to the full nine months, died today after a battle with cancer.
We at the Pro-Life Action League offer our prayers for the repose of Sandra’s soul. We believe she now knows the peace that she so ardently sought for the past forty years.
Sandra Cano was haunted by the fact that her case had brought about abortion on demand. She herself had never wanted an abortion. She never sought an abortion. What she sought was legal assistance to get her two children back from foster care.
In 1970 Sandra was poor, uneducated and, in her own words, ignorant. She was also pregnant. She went to Atlanta Legal Aid to get help for a divorce and the custody of her children. Instead they handed her off to attorney Margie Pitts Hames, who used Sandra’s situation to bring a lawsuit against Georgia Baptist Hospital and the state of Georgia in her effort to legalize abortion.
Sandra did not know what the lawyers were up to and actually fled to Oklahoma to avoid being forced into having an abortion. She didn’t even know she had filed a lawsuit.
Since 1974 Sandra had tried to undo the damage wrought by Doe v. Bolton. Some in the pro-life movement listened to her, but she felt very alone in her struggles. In April 1996 she and Norma McCorvey, (“Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade), spoke at the Pro-Life Action League’s fourth “Meet the Abortion Providers” Conference, giving Sandra a public forum to tell her side of the story.
Sandra represents the millions of women who have been harmed by abortion advocates, taking advantage of her naiveté and her inexperience with the legal system. Instead of helping her with her real problem, they used her and did not even bother to inform her that she was the plaintiff in a landmark case, seeking something she was totally opposed to.
In a Washington Times interview in 1997 Sandra was quoted as saying, “When I leave this world, I don’t want to be branded as someone who took babies’ lives.”
We at the Pro-Life Action League will remember Sandra and her lifelong struggle to undo the devastation brought by her lawsuit and her willingness to tell anyone who would listen that she never wanted what happened as a result of her exploitation.
Sandra loved and cherished life. May eternal light shine upon her.
