Plaintiff in Roe v Wade US abortion case says she was paid to switch sides

She was the woman at the centre of a landmark Supreme Court case that legalised abortion in the US - one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in the last half-century.

Norma McCorvey, otherwise known as "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, had been the face of the abortion-rights movement in the 1970s before suddenly switching sides.

It has now emerged in a stunning deathbed confession that rather than having a change of heart, she was paid to do so by anti-abortion rights groups.

"I took their money and they'd put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That's what I'd say," she told filmmakers of the documentary AKA Jane Roe, which is due for release this week.

"It was all an act?" she was asked. "Yeah, I did it well too. I am a good actress — of course I'm not acting now,” Ms McCorvey replied.

The 1973 Supreme Court ruling came after Ms McCorvey, then a 25-year-old single woman, challenged the criminal abortion laws in Texas that forbade abortion as unconstitutional except in cases where the mother's life was in danger.

Henry Wade was the Texas attorney general who defended the anti-abortion law. Ms McCorvey first filed the case in 1969, when she was pregnant with her third child and claimed that she had been raped. But the case was rejected and she was forced to give birth.

The court's judgement was based on the decision that a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy came under the freedom of personal choice in family matters, as protected by the Constitution.

Nearly 50 years on and abortion remains a controversial issue in America, with many states still pushing to put restrictions on the procedure.

Ms McCorvey had campaigned for years for the pro-choice movement, before coming out against abortion in 1995 after purportedly finding religion at the hands of an evangelical minister. She went on to publicly participate in anti-abortion rights protests for the next two decades, and even published a memoir in 1998 explaining her decision to change sides.

One of the evangelical pastors says Ms McCorvey was paid as much $500,000 for her appearances on their behalf.

Ms McCorvey set the record straight about her opinion of abortion: "If a young woman wants to have an abortion, fine. You know, that's no skin off my a**. You know that's why they call it choice, it's your choice," she told AKA Jane Roe, which was filmed in the last months of her life before her death at the age of 69 in 2017.