“I know a lady in Florida named Penny,” he said. “She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was dumped in a pot. Luckily, her grandmother rescued her and took her to another hospital.”
He provided no other details, and the debate moderator continued. But the story is far more complicated than DeSantis is making out, according to news reports, doctors who reviewed her case and interviews with the woman.
It dates back to 1955, a very different time in medicine and society. Abortion is largely illegal, including in Florida, where contraceptive options are few and babies born very early for gestational age are not expected to survive. Anti-abortion groups often use stories like this to speak out against abortion.DeSantis has also been a frequent critic of late-pregnancy abortions on the campaign trail and has sought court action republican primary voter.
Decades later, there is little way to verify the details of what happened. That raised questions about the story’s relevance to the ongoing struggle for abortion rights in the United States since World War II. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade overturned and argued last year abortion Later in pregnancy—especially when experts say such procedures are extremely rare and often involve serious complications.
The woman, Miriam “Penny” Hopper, 67, a Florida resident, was told she had had multiple abortions while in the womb but survived. The first was performed at home by her parents, and the second was when a local doctor instructed nurses to dispose of her in the bedpan after she was induced at just 23 weeks pregnant, she said in an interview.
Hopper said she learned from her father that her parents attempted to terminate the pregnancy at home. Complications arose and they went to the hospital. The story goes that the doctor didn’t hear the heartbeat, gave her an injection and instructed the nurses to discard the baby “live or die”.
Hopper said she was born with squeaky noises but was placed on the hospital’s back porch. She said her grandmother found her alive the next day, wrapped in a towel, and she was taken to another hospital. Hopper was told she was there for three and a half months and survived with the help of an incubator. Nurses nicknamed her “Penny” because of her copper-red hair.
“My parents told me all my life, ‘It’s a miracle you’re alive,'” she said.
Hopper used her story to work with national anti-abortion groups. But doctors who reviewed the report said her birth did not appear to have been an attempted abortion and questioned the accuracy of the presumed gestational age.
When Hopper was born in the 1950s, before major advances in premature infant care, babies born at 23 weeks would have little chance survived. Even into the early 2000s, the generally accepted “margin of survival” remained around 24 weeks.pregnancy is considered a full semester 39 to 40 weeks.
Several obstetricians and gynecologists said the case appeared to be considered a stillbirth because doctors were unable to detect a heartbeat. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal fetal medicine physician in Colorado, said the procedure performed at the hospital would not be considered an abortion because the fetus is considered dead.
The story was also complicated by a newspaper article in 1956, a year after her birth, documenting Hopper’s miraculous recovery. The Lakeland Chronicle report said doctors at a hospital in Wauchula had “greater efforts” to keep the 1-pound, 11-ounce baby alive before she was escorted by police to a larger facility. Hospital. She was taken into an incubator and placed in an incubator.
“It sounded a lot like they were expecting a stillbirth. When she came out alive, they did their best to resuscitate the baby and get her where she needed to go,” Zahedi-Spoom said.
Another news article in the Tampa Tribune said that “doctors recommended hatching, but Wauchula did not provide it,” leading to her transfer.
Hopper disputed that doctors initially tried to save her: “I don’t think any effort was really put into it.”
The ob-gyn who reviewed the details also disputed Hopper’s gestational age at birth, saying her recorded birth weight was more likely to match the fetus a few weeks later, around 26 or 27 weeks. At 23 weeks, they say, the lungs are not yet mature enough to breathe without strong assistance, so it is unlikely that such a baby would survive being left outdoors for hours.
Before ultrasound was used for medical purposes in 1955, it was difficult to accurately date a pregnancy, said Mary Jane Minkin, a gynecologist at the Yale School of Medicine.
Hopper acknowledged that, aside from newspaper clippings, there is little record of her birth. Her parents are deceased, and the county will not share her birth records.
She confirmed she was the person DeSantis was referring to, but did not say whether she had met or talked with the governor.
“I’m not going to get involved in this issue because I don’t want to get involved in politics,” she said. “This story is about abortion and surviving after abortion.”
The review of anecdotes from DeSantis’ debate comes as he struggles to maintain his position. distant second place in the Republican nomination race. He touted his staunch opposition to abortion to curry favor with conservative voters, though he avoided answering directly when asked during the debate whether he favored a national ban on six-week abortions.he signed such legislation earlier this year in Florida.
“We’re selling it better than the Democrats,” DeSantis said on stage during the Fox News debate. “We will not allow abortion until a child is born, and we will hold them accountable for extremism.”
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Medical experts generally agree Abortion ’till birth Misleading. Terminations later in pregnancy are very rare, they say, and usually require the use of drugs to induce preterm labor, unlike surgical abortions. Experts say this is usually only done when fetal survival is low occur.
In 2020, less than 1% According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 percent of abortions in the United States are performed at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis School of Law and a leading historian of the abortion debate, said that especially with advances in medical technology, the chances of a baby surviving an abortion are next to zero.
But stories like this continue to resonate. Anti-abortion groups have used similar anecdotes of abortion “survivors” in legislative debates about so-called abortion. “Live and Live” Measures.These measures require doctors to provide life-sustaining care in patients extremely rare cases Baby survives abortion attempt.
Proponents of expanded access to abortion also tout emotionally charged stories, especially after the Supreme Court struck down constitutional protections for the abortion procedure.
women already forced to carry a baby have a fatal fetal abnormality or have turn around and walk away had to go from hospital absent for abortion. Mark Herron, a senior adviser to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a national abortion advocacy group, said the stories are more relevant to the current abortion debate.
“This is happening now, not a 50-year-old story that has absolutely nothing to do with abortion today,” Herron said.
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