Conservative radio host Glenn Beck shelled out $600,000 this week to purchase an archive of Roe v. Wade documents put up for auction by Linda Coffee, one of the last living members of the team that argued the landmark abortion case before the Supreme Court in 1973.
Coffee’s partner, Rebecca Hartt, had expressed hope that the collection would be preserved for the historical record after the Supreme Court overturned Roe with its decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson last summer.
“[T]he collection needs to go to the next generation, because you’re not going to have a case like this again,” Hartt recently told D Magazine, a Dallas publication. “We don’t know who’s going to end up acquiring it, but hopefully it will motivate some of the people to get into law or politics or whatever, because it needs to be challenged.”
Beck plans to debut the collection this summer at the “American Journey Experience,” the Texas museum he opened in 2020 to house curios like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wheelchair, letters from George Washington and other bits of American history.
It will be surrounded by “added historical context,” Beck said, claiming that Coffee’s documents would be “at home” alongside his “German eugenics” artifacts. Beck suggested that the abortion rights movement had roots in the racist eugenics movement due to beliefs held by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, whom the organization has long denounced. The practice of abortion, of course, long predates the rise of eugenics.
The radio host read from a rambling press release on his show Friday.
“Coffee and many of those upset about the overturning of Roe in June were dealt a second blow this week,” Beck announced. “In a move likely to enrage leftists, including those terrorists the Department of Justice has proven unable or unwilling to hold accountable, nationally syndicated radio host and co-founder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck acquired the collection, sealing the deal on March 6.”
“Roe v. Wade is history, and now that history is in the hands of a pro-life conservative,” he said. Beck noted that while the price was high, he and his wife believed the “real price of these documents were the lives of at least 60 million children.”
Some 150 pages of documents are included in the archive, which Coffee and Hartt said they began putting together after Coffee nearly died of West Nile Virus in 2020.
Included is the letter Coffee wrote to convince attorney Sarah Weddington to join the case, the quill pens she received for arguing a case before the Supreme Court, and the original signed affidavit by Norma McCorvey, the woman behind the name “Jane Roe” who was prevented by Texas law from getting an abortion. McCorvey died in 2017, and Weddington died in 2021.