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As incendiary as the topic of abortion is in normal political discourse, it gets magnified whenever references are made to abortion survivors.
As with ‘de-transitioners’, there is something about the very existence of abortion survivors that pokes giant holes in favorite left-wing talking points.
If you have someone defending pro-life arguments, it’s a lot harder to dismiss an alleged ‘clump of cells’ as sub-human when the person you are trying to convince took his or her first breath when they weren’t yet ‘human’ by the left’s definitions.
While giving account for his role in signing Florida’s aggressive pro-life legislation, DeSantis made reference to someone named Penny who miraculously survived several attempts to end her life before it began, including being ‘discarded in a pan’ before her grandmother rushed her to another hospital and saved her life.
ICYMI: Ron DeSantis drew outrage last night for highlighting the story of abortion survivor Miriam “Penny” Hopper.
“She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan…her grandmother saved her & brought her to a different hospital.”pic.twitter.com/YpBUlzU05i
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) August 24, 2023
It prompted reaction like this:
Well, Steve, this ‘obviously’ untrue story just stood up and introduced herself.
Miriam “Penny” Hopper, 67, has since come forward to claim she lived despite being subjected to repeated attempts to abort her in 1955 — even being left “in a bedpan on the back porch of the clinic” where her mother tried to terminate the pregnancy after 23 weeks due to complications.
A doctor had been unable to detect a fetal heartbeat and induced the abortion by giving Hopper’s mother a shot, later telling a nurse to “discard the baby dead or alive,” according to Hopper’s own testimony in an ad by pro-life group Faces of Choice. — NYPost
A baby born at the 23 week mark — and surviving — pokes holes in the Roe V. Wade ‘viability’ criteria on which the very rational in support of abortion was erected.
The Post referenced other sources where her story was shared, including news reports from the 1950s:
Contemporary newspaper articles in the Lakeland Ledger and the Tampa Tribune confirm that Hopper did in fact make a rare recovery after being born prematurely, though the details were unclear.
A photo included in the story shows March 12th, 1966 as the first time mom was able to hold Penny in her arms, despite the fact that she had been born in November.
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