FL Paper Fact-Checks Abortion Story Told By DeSantis

The Miami Herald reports:

At Wednesday’s Republican candidates debate, during a discussion of late-term abortion, Gov. Ron DeSantis told a horrific but puzzling story. “I know a lady in Florida named Penny,” the GOP presidential candidate said. “She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to another hospital.”

Penny is real and her last name is Hopper. But DeSantis failed to note key details from her remarkable story: The person who tried to end Penny’s life in the womb was not a doctor or even an illegal abortion provider — it was her father.

And his effort to abort his daughter with a coat hanger took place almost two decades before the Supreme Court’s seismic Roe v. Wade decision, which established a woman’s right to an abortion.

Read the full article. The piece includes multiple images of contemporaneous news articles about the incident.

My latest: DeSantis’ story about the “baby in the pan” doesn’t tell the whole story. The real story is about the perils women face in a world where abortion is outlawed. https://t.co/tGzrQUP6Nq

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) August 26, 2023