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After she dropped out of school in the ninth grade, she married at 17 to a man she later learned was a convicted child molester. Throughout her marriage, Sandra's husband would disappear for months at a time.
Legalized by Deception
When she was pregnant with her fourth child, her children were sent to live in foster care. She wanted to provide for her children, so she sought legal help to divorce her husband and regain custody of her children. Sandra was befriended by a lawyer named Margie Pitts Haines, who apparently tricked her into signing an affidavit that said she wanted to obtain a late-term abortion.
According to court documents, she sought an abortion, but was turned down. Sandra denies this.
Years later she tried to obtain her records at the abortion clinic, which allegedly showed that Cano came to the abortion clinic to kill her unborn child. The clinic turned down her request, so she hired well-known Christian attorney Wendell Bird. When Bird sought her records, the clinic claimed those records had disappeared. Yet Sandra's alleged application for an abortion was used by Pitts Haines to legalize late-term abortions, and her name was the only one listed as a plaintiff in the class action suit that became known as Doe v. Bolton.
In addition, the sworn affidavit with Sandra's signature was used by Pitts Haines as she fought to legalize late-term abortions in the courts. But Sandra has no recollection of signing this affidavit: "I don't think that was my signature, but I can't be sure, because I signed a lot of papers with her [Pitts Haines]. She did not tell me what they were, and I trusted her. Everyone of those statements was false."
When she found out she had been scheduled to get an abortion, Sandra retreated to Oklahoma. She only returned to Georgia when Pitts Haines assured her she would not have to get an abortion.
When Doe v. Bolton was first argued in federal district court, the attorney representing Sandra's then-unborn baby asked the three judge panel for specific information on the anonymous Mary Doe. The judges denied this request, calling it irrelevant. They eventually struck down parts of Georgia's abortion law. Both sides appealed, and the case went directly to the Supreme Court.
At the Supreme Court, Dorothy T. Beasley, the attorney for the state, complained to the justices that the facts in Doe were few and far between: "We know of no facts. There are no facts in this case; no established facts."
Despite Beasley's protests, the Supreme Court decided for the plaintiff, who still had no idea her name was being used for this purpose. Because of Doe v. Bolton, which was handed down in 1973, late-term abortions are legal in America. This includes the brutal procedure known as partial-birth abortion, which involves a baby being delivered except for his/her head. The abortionist then plunges scissors into the back of the baby's neck, and inserts a vacuum to suck his/her brains out. (The Supreme Court upheld this procedure in 2000.)
Sandra first heard of the Court's decision -- and her own unwilling role in it -- when she saw the announcement on the TV news.
"Instead of being happy, it felt like a heavy weight was placed on me."
Setting the Record Straight
When she realized her name had been used against her will to legalize late-term abortion, she tried telling people that she was "Doe" of Doe v. Bolton. But no one would listen.
"If you're not an attorney, and you don't know what you're doing in the legal system, nobody would listen to me," said Cano. "Without any proof, without any facts, nobody wanted to listen to me. They looked at me as if I were some kind of nut."
In 1988 she began to speak out against abortion, and people finally started listening to her story. But it nearly cost Sandra her life. She recalled an incident where her car was vandalized and shot at. Another time, when she was standing with her four-week-old grandchild on the porch, she was shot at. As a result, she refused to speak out against abortion for several years.
In the early 1990s, Sandra was re-united with Melissa, the girl she was supposed to have wanted to abort. In April 16, 1992, Melissa prematurely gave birth to a little boy, twenty-two years to the day after Doe v. Bolton was filed, in the same hospital where she supposedly sought an abortion. Since the baby, Cory, was less than 24 weeks old, the hospital refused to help her little grandson, claiming he was "just a fetus."
Sandra said the nurses claimed the baby was not fully developed. But as she remembered, "The baby was born alive. A lot of people think a baby at only four-and-a-half months is not fully developed. This was a fully developed baby; every part of his body was there. He had air in his little lungs. The hospital would not give him life support for the reason that he was not considered a baby."
Cory died that day, and Sandra was struck that because of the Doe v. Bolton decision, babies bigger than her grandson are killed every day.
Today, Sandra is struggling to raise two of her grandchildren. She is a plaintiff, along with Norma McCorvey, the "Roe" of Roe v. Wade, in a project called "Operation Outcry" to reverse the cases that legalized abortion in 1973. "'Operation Outcry' is about protecting women, because abortion hurts women," she said. "Abortion kills babies, and women who get them are never the same."
She is also proud to take part in the "Shake the Nation Back to Life" campaign. Along with McCorvey and Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a co-founder of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, or NARAL, she filmed TV spots for the campaign to be aired in the near future. "These are the last days of abortion," Sandra predicts. "This is God's time, and there is an end coming to it. Abortion is a lie."
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