Daughter of Woman in Abortion Case Takes a Pro-Choice Stand

The daughter of a plaintiff in a landmark abortion rights case said Friday she has decided to join the campaign for a woman’s right to abortion, a stance opposite that of her biological mother, an outspoken abortion foe.

Melissa Able, 19, of Atlanta, said she will attend a massive pro-choice rally in Rancho Park on Sunday, her first foray into the loud and prolonged abortion rights fray. The rally is expected to be the second-largest in a series of nationwide pro-choice demonstrations on Sunday, the day after an anti-abortion march is to be held in Washington.

“I believe the choice should be left up to the woman whether or not they would like to go through with the pregnancy,” Able said Friday in a news conference at attorney Gloria Allred’s office. “I am speaking out because I don’t want to see women’s rights taken away.”

With those simple statements, Able, herself the mother of a toddler, entered the public arena. But perhaps few women’s decision to take a stand on the issue is as tinged with irony as it is for Able.

Her biological mother, Sandra Race Cano, was the “Mary Doe” of Doe vs. Bolton, the obscure companion case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court along with Roe vs. Wade and helped established a woman’s right to abortion.

Able is the product of Cano’s fourth pregnancy, which was nearly aborted and was the subject of Doe vs. Bolton.

Cano, who also lives in Atlanta, gave her infant daughter up for adoption before the legal case was decided and now has become a fervent opponent of legalized abortion.

Cano and Able were reunited last year for the first time since Cano had given her up, and the two even lived together for a few months. But now, Able said, the two have not spoken for months, although she would not explain the reasons for the estrangement.

She said she did not discuss with her biological mother her decision to tell her story.

“She’s not going to be pleased, but I’m already getting ready for that,” Able said in a deep Southern drawl.

When Cano became pregnant with Able, she had already lost her other three children to foster care or adoption because she could not care for them. At the time of her fourth pregnancy in 1970, she was, according to her own accounts, emotionally and financially unstable, had been a mental patient and married to a man whom she called a child molester.

According to court documents and other published reports and interviews with those involved in her case, Cano applied for an abortion at a downtown Atlanta public hospital, but was rejected under Georgia’s restrictive abortion law. With help from the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and a team of ACLU lawyers, Cano took a pseudonym and sued, while applying for an abortion at Georgia Baptist Hospital. She was approved there, but she left town rather than go through with it.

Cano now maintains that she was manipulated by her lawyers in the case and that she never wanted an abortion.

“I was plain old used,” she told The Times in an interview earlier this year.

Able, whose long blonde hair and bangs and a face devoid of makeup give her the appearance of someone younger than her 19 years, said the decision to speak out was not such a difficult one.

“I don’t think it should be illegal,” she said of abortion. “You don’t know what might happen to you. Who knows, someday I might need one.”

Able said she has never had an abortion. She said she married when she was pregnant with her infant daughter, but said she never considered getting an abortion at that time.

She said she discussed her decision with her 24-year-old husband, who washes cars for a living, as well as with her adopted mother.

“It was something between me and my husband,” she said. “He agreed with me. There wasn’t much to discuss.”

Her adopted mother, who has adopted other children, “said if I would like to do it (speak out), that I should. She believes in abortion too.”

Able said she was reunited with her birth mother when Cano’s lawyer contacted the attorney who had handled the adoption, and that lawyer in turn called her adopted mother.

“My mother left it up to me whether or not I wanted to meet her . . . so I called her,” Able said. It was only then that her adopted mother told her about Sandra Cano and her role in the landmark abortion rights case.

Able and her daughter lived with Cano on and off during a five-month period, but then had a falling-out that she will not discuss.

When she decided she would speak out in favor of abortion rights, she said, she looked in the telephone book under “pro-choice,” but found nothing. She then called several abortion clinics in Atlanta, and eventually was put in touch with Allred, a lawyer known for taking on feminist lawsuits.

“I’ve heard on TV and the papers that there’s a thing going on about one side making it illegal and also another side wanting it to be legal,” she said. “I think it should stay legal.”

But she said she doesn’t give much thought to how close she came to not being born, had her mother gone through with an abortion.

“She had her rights to her own feelings,” she said. “If she’d had an abortion, she would have had her right.”