By Bryan Lash
It was 1965. Sandra Race, the seventeen-year-old daughter of an Atlanta City sanitation worker, was growing up in a poor neighborhood when her life was about to be changed forever. She had already dropped out of school; poor grades, the taunts of classmates about her weight and the disfiguring smile from Bell's Palsy were too much for her to face each day. Her mother tried forcing her and once nearly broke a broomstick across her back in the process. Like most adolescents, Sandra dreamed of romantic encounters with some "knight in shining armor" who would provide her with affection and attention. Adolescent insecurity and vulnerability would soon blind her senses and dull her better judgment. In her fragile emotional state, Sandra was a willing pawn for anyone who showed her the slightest favor.
Around this time, Sandra met Joel Lee Bensing, a gas station attendant and occasional day laborer from Hugo, Oklahoma. Sandra was smitten by the smile of this 22-year-old man. Her emotions soared. Having known him for only 2 days yet reeling from Joel's attention and affection, Sandra readily accepted an invitation to Stone Mountain Park, a popular recreational area 25 miles away. Somewhere along the way, he convinced her that a trip to visit his family was in order. Thirteen hours later they pulled into Hugo, Oklahoma. When she called her panic-stricken parents, her father threatened to have Joel arrested for kidnapping. Upon their return to Atlanta, her father beat her with a belt. The couple was then driven to Alabama where Joel was forced to marry Sandra in a civil ceremony.
A week after they were married, Sandra found out that her husband was serving probation for molesting two different 5-year-old children. Over the next several years Joel was charged again with molestation and kidnapping. He would appear only a few days out of the month and was in and out of jail their entire marriage. Sandra's other relationships were also tenuous. Sandra's father died, her mother remarried only weeks after his death, and Sandra's stepfather proved to be a very demanding and many times an abusive man. He resented the presence of another man's six children and was not inhibited in releasing his frustration with verbal tirades and physical assaults.
Joel never properly provided for either Sandra or their four children. Things were so tight that on many occasions Sandra's family could not house her. Sandra's younger sister Barbara recalls:
"There were times when Sandra and her children would have to sleep at the Salvation Army Center at night. In the morning she would have to leave there and sit all day outside until the Center reopened in the evening."
It was during this time that her mother's frustration was cause for her to take out a series of "lunacy warrants" on Sandra. She did her best to provide for her children but there were too many factors working against her. Sandra was taken to the state mental hospital at Milledgeville and her children placed in foster care. Undaunted, she was soon released. Sandra readily admits that at this time in her life she was emotionally unstable, but she loved her children and was trying to provide for them in very difficult times. She wasn't into drugs, alcohol or prostitution. She wasn't living a wild lifestyle. She was by her own admission just "poor, uneducated, naive and ignorant."
In March 1970, at her wits end, barely 22 years of age, married to a convicted child molester, her children in foster care and pregnant with her fourth child; Sandra Race Bensing went to Atlanta Legal aid for help. Poverty-stricken, this was her only avenue for legal assistance. She was seeking a divorce from Joel and legal help in getting her children returned to her from foster care. The friendly faces and willing ears were a welcome "oasis" to Sandra, who had seen little of either her entire adult life. Her new "friends" there soon introduced her to an attorney named Margie Pitts Hames who was eager to help with her "situation." Sandra saw Margie as the "life preserver thrown to a drowning man." The only problem was that Ms. Hames' unstated solution to Sandra's predicament was not what Sandra had in mind. Margie's plan was abortion first, and then divorce and freeing the children from foster care. Sandra was kept in the dark and told only that her case had something to do with "Women's Rights." When asked once about the subject of abortion she responded "she did not believe in it, for herself, but could not speak for anyone else."
So began the murky legal journey through which Ms. Hames dragged her virtually blindfolded client. Court documents presented by Hames show that Sandra applied for an abortion at Grady Memorial Hospital, the only place where the poor could obtain an abortion. Hames ignored the fact that Sandra had already stated her opposition to abortion; in fact, extensive searches done at both Sandra's request and that of Georgia State Senator Pam Glanton has turned up no evidence of such an application. Next Ms. Hames, in partnership with Sandra's mother, arranged an abortion for Sandra at Georgia Baptist Hospital; Sandra had no knowledge of this plan. When Sandra finally found out about it, she fled to Oklahoma alone. She had never traveled alone before. Sandra had avoided the abortion others had arranged for her. Hames filed a class action suit in U. S. District Court naming Sandra Race Bensing as Mary Doe: the only pregnant woman in the action. Allegedly, the pregnant Bensing was denied an abortion at Grady Memorial Hospital by the abortion review panel; her case was then taken, reviewed and approved by another review panel at Georgia Baptist Hospital. The case was presented to liberalize the Georgia abortion law so a woman could abort her baby at any point through the ninth month of pregnancy without the interference of a panel of doctors as the statute directed.
No evidence has ever been found to verify the claim Sandra was either seen or rejected by Grady Hospital. Hames named Sandra as the plaintiff, even though Sandra Bensing did not ever want or seek an abortion. She only wanted a divorce from a convicted child molester and help in getting her children back. Grady Hospital officials neither saw nor rejected her alleged abortion request. So Sandra was presented as a pregnant woman seeking an abortion, to which she was adamantly opposed, whose non-existent request for an abortion was therefore never heard or discussed by hospital officials. While she was on a turbulent emotional roller coaster, her emotional state was not cause for her to seek an abortion as alleged by Hames. Her actions demonstrate the opposite: when she found out an abortion had been scheduled for her at Georgia Baptist Hospital, she fled and only agreed to return if she did not have to have an abortion. Sandra was never asked to testify before any court official and convey her supposed ardent desire to have an abortion. Sandra was a pawn in the hands of a feminist ideologue. Her attorney, Margie Pitts Hames was after abortion on demand and believed she was doing something great for women's rights, all the while ignoring the rights and wishes of her client.
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Later in her adult life: In the end, Cano ended up giving her baby up for adoption, considering her life situation at the time. Abortion, though a case was argued in her name, had never been an option as she told TheBlaze, “I couldn’t live with the fact that I had shed a baby’s blood.”
Sandra Cano, the ''Doe'' in Doe v. Bolton is a Pro-Life Speaker and Activist. Sandra is speaking out against abortion through education, ministry and love. Sandra started a ministry called Wonderfully Made Ministry, Inc. to be able to go forward and to get the truth out about Doe v. Bolton and the pain it causes the mothers and fathers when a child's life is taken though abortion. Her mission is to speak out and offer help and support to other ministries in the fight for life. Sandra wants to see other children's lives changed for the better. Sandra Cano has battled for over thirty-four years trying to get her voice heard and the truth about the lies and deceit of Doe v. Bolton. Sandra is a grandmother of two children that she's raising for her daughter. Sandra comments that she had to become a grandmother in order to experience motherhood.
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