How extreme is Roe v. Wade? To understand we must unmask the seldom-studied companion case, Doe v. Bolton, and also examine the false narrative that abortion activists crafted to gain sympathy for their movement.

When “Jane Roe,” whose real name was Norma McCorvey, converted to Christianity and the pro-life cause in 1995, she explained how she was coached into lies for this purpose. She had become pregnant as a promiscuous and bi-sexual carnival worker. But in order to solicit sympathy, the official narrative was that she had been gang raped. While this narrative did not make it into court documents, it certainly did in the press.

In the other key abortion case, “Mary Doe,” whose real name was Sandra Cano, was the mother of three in Georgia with a fourth child on the way. Cano was seeking a divorce and trying retrieve two of her children from foster care. She did not want an abortion, but that didn’t matter for feminist attorney Marjorie Pitt Hames who was fishing for a client who might contrive a plea. She chose Cano who did not ask the purpose of Hames’ lawsuit, nor did she give full consent for Hames to use her as an anonymous plaintiff.

Without Cano realizing what they were doing her lawyers sidelined the issues she wanted help with and instead filed a lawsuit stating that she wanted an abortion. When Cano’s mother and lawyer actually arranged for her to have an abortion, Cano fled the state.

Many liberals were shocked by Roe and the interference by the federal court in making a ruling that destroyed states’ rights

As discussed earlier, about a dozen states had legalized abortion prior to Roe, beginning with Colorado in 1967. Abortion was seen by many liberals in the pre-Roe years as something for states to decide. Besides Colorado, these states included Alaska, California, New York, Hawaii, North Carolina and others. It was obvious, however, that many states in the Midwest, South, Great Plains and Mountain states wanted nothing to do with abortion.

Many liberals were shocked by Roe and the interference by the federal court in making a ruling that destroyed states’ rights. They feared the courts might someday use this power against them … as had happened in Plessy, a court ruling that danced around the civil rights that the 14th Amendment supposedly protected. This fear still exists today.

All of the pre-Roe abortion states, however, had placed restrictions on the practice … such as parental or spousal consent, gestation limits, medical review boards, or eugenic reasons for anticipated fetal abnormalities.

But the Roe and Doe decisions snuffed out all these restrictions. The courts arrogantly departed from their legal competence and barged into the medical domain, contriving a “trimester” system.

There could be no abortion restrictions in the first three months of pregnancy, or first trimester. In the second, states might regulate abortion for the sake of maternal safety, such as requiring a full surgical staff and hospital facilities.

States could prohibit abortion in the third trimester unless the woman’s life or “health” were endangered. But with Doe the term “health” was defined so broadly as to provide no meaningful way to restrict abortion. Health would include “all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well-being of the patient.”

Now, of course, it is mainstream Democratic Party politics to advocate for abortion through all nine months of pregnancy – and beyond – even minutes after a child is actually born.

So, the Doe case opened the floodgates for abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. During the 1970s, 80s and 90s, mainstream newspaper editors often took license in their characterization of legalized abortion. They may have done this because hardly anyone paid attention to the Doe case, and because many were salted with a sympathetic pro-abortion attitude that did not want to hear all the disturbing facts.

This narrative made its way into textbooks and encyclopedias as well, claiming that Roe legalized abortion in the first three months, sometimes admitting it was six months.

Only after partial birth abortion and federal legislation to halt it made national headlines did the mainstream press end their erroneous editing of textbooks, press articles and pro-life letters. Now, of course, it is mainstream Democratic Party politics to advocate for abortion through all nine months of pregnancy – and beyond – even minutes after a child is actually born.

This is how boiling frogs are cooked and how a society slowly becomes used to barbaric and inhumane laws.

When daring pro-lifers took photographs of late-term abortions to show on picket lines or newspapers ads, they were dismissed as exhibiting “pornography” or “only very rare cases.” Some claimed, “It ought to be illegal to show such pictures.” Of course, “rare” is a matter of comparison. One percent of a million is 10,000. And if the photos ought to be illegal, what about the acts that produced them?

This is how boiling frogs are cooked and how a society slowly becomes used to barbaric and inhumane laws.

In part four we will conclude this series by exploring the continuous political failures to repeal the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe and Doe, as opposed to what should have been done – or yet could be done – to actually end abortion.

Click here for part one of this series and here for part two.

The writer is host of The Bird’s Eye View radio show in Kenai. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2008 as member of the Alaskan Independence Party and is the former president of Alaska Right to Life.