Rest in peace, Norma McCorvey

What a hard job, being a part of history.  See this obituary in the Los Angeles Times by Mary Rourke and Emily Alpert Reyes.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-norma-mccorvey-snap-story.html

In 1970 when Norma McCorvey became pregnant with her third baby, she wanted to terminate the pregnancy.

Lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee needed a woman like her in order to contest the law making abortion illegal in Texas.

Norma agreed to work with them, not realizing that the court process would take years.  She ended up having the baby, her third, and giving it up for adoption.

Norma had a hard life.  Her parents barely made a living and divorced when she was 13.  She began running away at age 10.

She married at 16 but was beaten.  After being part of the Roe v. Wade case. she received hate mail and didn't fit in with the middle class feminist movement, partly because she was lesbian and the movement had not yet changed to accept gay persons.

Norma got a job at an abortion clinic but was befriended by an anti-abortion pastor, through whom she became a Christian and began opposing abortion, then writing her second autobiography. 

She was "a very complicated person," said Gloria Allred, the lawyer who represented Norma during her 1970-73 court case.  Norma stayed in touch with her throughout her life.

Norma died at 69 on February 11 of heart failure in an assisted living facility.  She was born in 1947, a year before I was born.

Now she may rest in peace.

The Name Change Issue

In the 1960s, I never questioned whether women should take their husbands' names in marrying.

In 1970, however, I read a newspaper article about women keeping their birth names, and I decided instantly that I would never change my name to that of a husband.

In 2012 my daughter Ellen married, and she decided to take her husband's surname.  

It seems she hadn't really appreciated the surname Eggebroten that I in my feminist ardor had bestowed on her.  

John had agreed to giving each daughter both his surname and mine: Rosamond Arthur Eggebroten, Ellen A.E., and Marie A.E.  No hyphen.  

But the middle surname got slighted over the years by teachers, schools, and friends.  Ellen was known as Ellen Eggebroten, and she was more than happy to gain a more elegant surname: Michel.

In today's LA Times, another millennial explains her decision to add her husband's surname to her own.  

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-alpert-changing-name-20131112,0,7533204.story#axzz2klRVD5MH

Read it.  Each generation, each person has her own reasons for deciding how to represent her identity.

It's all about choice.