Texas Lawyer Rowe v. Wade File Sold at Auction for $615,000

DALLAS. The archive of a Dallas lawyer who served in Roe v. Wade in the 1970s sold at auction for more than $600,000.

The winning bid for Linda Coffey’s collection of documents was $615,633 at the Nate D. Sanders auction Friday night in Los Angeles, the auction house announced.

Coffey was a lawyer who argued in the US Supreme Court for the right of her client Norma McCorvey to have an abortion. McCorvey was then known as “Jane Roe” in what would become Roe’s landmark case against Wade.

Coffee’s archive, which was auctioned off Friday night, included an affidavit signed by McCorvey, pens given to Coffee to testify in the Supreme Court, and nearly 150 documents and letters related to the case.

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

She later graduated from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Coffee was a clerk for federal judge Sarah Hughes, who famously took the oath of office from Lyndon B. Johnson as president on Air Force One following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Coffey later teamed up with UT law graduate Sarah Weddington to challenge abortion laws in Texas.

“She was going to defy the abortion,” Coffey said. “I don’t know how she was going to do it because she didn’t have a client.”

Coffey said a church friend introduced her to Norma McCorvey, who was pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

In McCorvey’s case, she was Rowe, and Wade was Henry Wade, Dallas District Attorney.

Coffey and Weddington discussed the case in a Dallas courtroom that still exists on Airway Street downtown. The three judges who heard the case agreed with Jane Roe’s lawyers. But the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

“Anyway, I was a little nervous because I have never — this is the only time I have gone to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Coffey said.

Last year, the Supreme Court reversed course, overturning Roe v. Wade and sending the abortion ruling to the states.

Coffey watched from her East Texas home when the overturn was announced.

“I guess I could say it’s bittersweet,” Coffey said at the time. “It just reminded me about 50 years ago when the late Sarah Waddington and I heard that the US Supreme Court had ruled in our favor. I have followed all the ups and downs for so many years. be cancelled. It was only today that I really felt what it was.”