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DeSantis Busted by Florida Paper Over ‘Horrific’ Abortion Debate Tale
On Saturday morning the Miami Herald called out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for a story he told during Wednesday’s Republican Party debate about an abortion where he got the facts entirely wrong in order to make his anti-choice point.
At issue was a tale about a woman he called “Penny” who survived an abortion.
The Florida governor told a national TV audience, “I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to another hospital.”
According to the Herald, DeSantis got the story wrong even down to the woman’s name.
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As the Herald’s Julie K. Brown wrote, “Critics of the governor flocked to social media to suggest the “Penny” story was made up or wildly embellished. Supporters countered that liberals were triggered by an ugly truth.”
She continued, “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.
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Brown added that her debunking of the DeSantis’ story “is based on previous recorded statements made by Hopper, newspaper clippings, public records and an interview with a family member who after speaking to a journalist at length asked not to be identified. She confirmed that Hopper’s version of events has been told in family circles for years.”
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