Abortion Plaintiff, Daughter Reunited

Sandra Cano, one of the women whose Supreme Court cases established the right to abortion in 1973, was reunited Saturday with her first daughter, April, whom she had not seen for 17 years.

Cano was known in court papers as Mary Doe when she won the right to an abortion in a ruling released the same day as the more famous Roe vs. Wade case.

By then Cano had decided against the abortion and given the baby girl up for adoption. She had also lost custody of two older children, including April, now 22. Today, Cano holds an anti-abortion position.

April flew to Atlanta from Seattle for the reunion. Earlier this year, Cano was reunited with her daughter Melissa, whom she gave up for adoption in 1970 after deciding not to go ahead with an abortion. She was reunited with her son, Joel, 12 years ago.

Her desire for the abortion had thrust Cano into the history books as the anonymous plaintiff Mary Doe in the Doe vs. Bolton case. The court’s decision, which struck down Georgia’s restrictive anti-abortion law, was issued Jan. 22, 1973, the same day the court struck down Texas’ abortion law in Roe vs. Wade.

Joel and April were taken from Cano a year before the abortion ruling. She said she lost custody of them after a dispute with a baby-sitter and “because of me being young and naive.”

She launched a battle to regain custody of the two from the family they had been placed with and attained partial success when she got Joel 12 years ago, when he was 11.

Child welfare officials thought it best that April not rejoin the family, Cano said. She had managed to track the adoptive parents to Denver, but hit a dead end eight years ago.

In November, a week after the Thanksgiving holiday, April called her mother.

Cano said her daughter told her that she had been trying to find her mother since being abandoned by her adoptive family and placed in a mental hospital at age 14. She said her adoptive father, who refused to have anything to do with her, finally told her to contact Georgia social services, leading her to her mother.

Now that her family is back together, Cano said she plans to increase her involvement in the anti-abortion movement, which has invited her to represent her position on talk shows and at meetings.

“I’m going to start coming out, start speaking out and being more active now, because we’ve got the children back,” she said. “Not many people get that second chance.”