Washington ? The women behind the Supreme Court cases that led to legalized abortion told a Senate panel Thursday they never intended to help the abortion rights movement and claimed they were duped by lawyers representing them more than three decades ago.

The anti-abortion views of Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano, the anonymous plaintiffs in Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, are well-known, but it is the first time both have testified together in Congress.

Both women have tried unsuccessfully to overturn the cases that have spawned years of bitter debate over the question of abortion. They were called, along with legal and medical experts, to testify on the consequences of the 1973 decisions that found a Constitutional right to abortion.

The hearing before a packed Senate conference room was convened by Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, an ardent abortion opponent who is eyeing a run for president. He called it “the first in a series to highlight the effect certain Supreme Court decisions have had on American life.”

Brownback, chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, already has held hearings this year on the need for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage and the need for more federal obscenity prosecutions.

Cano, 57, told the panel she was uneducated, poor and pregnant with her fourth child when lawyers recruited her to challenge Georgia’s anti-abortion statute. She claims she never authorized lawyers to say she wanted an abortion.

McCorvey, 58, called herself “a pawn of the legal system” and recounted her decision to join the anti-abortion movement 10 years ago after she spent time working in an abortion clinic.

Neither Cano nor McCorvey ever had the abortions at issue in their cases.