Roe v. Wade: Lawyer Linda Coffee’s archive sold at auction

DALLAS — The archive for the Dallas legal professional who argued the Roe v. Wade case within the Seventies has sold at auction for greater than $600,000.

The successful bid for Linda Coffee’s trove of paperwork was once $615,633 at Nate D. Sanders Auctions on Friday night time in Los Angeles, the auction house announced.

Coffee was once the legal professional who argued prior to the U.S. Supreme Court over her shopper Norma McCorvey’s proper to an abortion. McCorvey was once then referred to as “Jane Roe” in what would change into the landmark Roe v. Wade case.

Coffee’s archive that was once auctioned Friday night time incorporated a sworn statement signed by means of McCorvey, quill pens given to Coffee for disagreeing prior to the Supreme Court and just about 150 paperwork and letters associated with the case.

Coffee, 80, was once born in Houston however grew up in Dallas, attending Woodrow Wilson High School. 

She later graduated from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Coffee clerked for federal pass judgement on Sarah Hughes, who famously swore in Lyndon B. Johnson as president on Air Force One after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

Coffee later teamed up with fellow UT regulation college grad, Sarah Weddington, to problem abortion regulations in Texas. 

“She was once going to carry an abortion problem,” Coffee said. “I don’t know how she was going to do it, because she didn’t have a client.”  

Coffee stated a chum from church offered her to Norma McCorvey, who was once pregnant and sought after an abortion.

In McCorvey’s case, she was once Roe and Wade was once Henry Wade, the Dallas District Attorney.

Coffee and Weddington argued the case in a Dallas court, which nonetheless exists on Ervay Street downtown. The 3 judges who heard the case agreed with Jane Roe’s lawyers. But the case was once appealed to the Supreme Court. 

“I was kind of nervous anyway because I never — this is the only time I’ve ever addressed the United States Supreme Court,” Coffee stated.

Last yr, the Supreme Court reversed path, overruling Roe v. Wade and sending the verdict on abortion to the states.

Coffee was once staring at from her house in East Texas when the overruling was once introduced.

“I guess I could say it’s bittersweet,” Coffee stated at the time. “It just reminded me what it was like about 50 years ago when the late Sarah Weddington and I heard the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in our favor. I followed all the ups and downs for so many years. There were times I thought it might be overruled. It was only today that I really felt that it has been.”