Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told a story during the GOP debate about a baby who survived multiple attempts to abort her, presumably to justify his near-total ban on abortions (after six weeks). But the Miami Herald reported the true story, which is very different from DeSantis’ version. The event occurred long before abortion was legal, and the person who tried to abort the baby with a coat hanger was the baby’s father.
The story was reported by Julie K. Brown with the aid of Sarah Blaskey, investigative reporters for the Miami Herald and was based on statements previously recorded by Penny Hopper, contemporaneous newspaper articles, public records and an interview with a family member who asked not to be identified. The DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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.”
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.
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…
Miriam “Penny” Hopper’s story begins in 1955, in a hospital in Wauchula, a small farming town in Central Florida. News reports at the time described her as a miracle baby, born weighing 1 pound, 11 ounces. She was so tiny that the nurses initially had to feed her with a dropper.
Her now-deceased father, Charles Wesley Browder Sr., was a U.S. Army sergeant during World War II who served on the front lines in Europe when he was just 20. His family said he was a “scout” who performed advance reconnaissance missions before being wounded, captured and tortured by the Germans. Military records show he was discharged with honors in 1945 and was awarded four Bronze Stars in addition to a Purple Heart, a Good-Conduct Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
Charles married Glenda Marie Pierce, and they settled in Wauchula, Florida, about 75 miles from Tampa.
In 1953, birth records show, Hopper’s parents had a son, Charles Browder Jr., who was born at Walker Memorial Hospital in nearby Avon Park. At the time of the 1950 census, Glenda worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, and Charles was a salesman. Hopper’s mother soon became pregnant with her second child, also a boy. In a video posted on YouTube several years ago by a group called “Florida Right to Life,” Hopper said that she learned later that her father had used the coat hanger to abort her mother’s second child. It is one of at least two videos on the Internet relating her story, although the videos differ on some details.
When her mother became pregnant a third time with her, Penny Browder said her father returned to the same method in an attempt to end the pregnancy, later explaining to his daughter that he was earning only $125 a week, which he felt wasn’t enough to support a larger family.
Browder’s mother developed complications during the coat-hanger procedure. The couple rushed to a nearby medical facility in the middle of the night, with her mother very ill and bleeding. In the video interviews, Hopper said her parents were met at the clinic by a doctor in his pajamas. He examined her mother — and concluded that the fetus had no heartbeat. He advised the couple to abort the baby, telling them the child would likely be stillborn.
“If it lives, it will be a burden on you your whole life,” the doctor allegedly said. He used saline and injected her mother with a drug, then left, instructing the nurse to “discard the baby dead or alive,” Hopper said in a video interview, a segment that was to be incorporated into a TV commercial by the anti-abortion group “Faces of Choice.” It can be found on YouTube.
When the baby arrived shortly after 3 a.m., the nurse wrapped her in a towel and placed her in a pan, Penny Hopper said one video. In the other, Hopper said her mother told her the baby was placed in a basket.
The following day, Glenda’s mother and aunt came to check on her at the clinic, where she was recuperating. They found the baby outside on a back porch, unwrapped her, and discovered she was alive, Hopper said.
“My grandmother was so upset she called the local police,” she said.
A news clipping incorporated into a video segment said the baby was transported from the medical facility in Wauchula to what was then Morrell Regional Hospital in Lakeland. The news clipping, which isn’t labeled, seems to partially contradict Hopper’s story, as it states that the doctors at the Wauchula facility “put forth greater efforts to keep the 1 pound, 11 ounce baby alive.” The story said the child was on the “brink of death” when she was transported to Lakeland, with a police escort that crashed on the way to the hospital.
The Tampa Tribune from Nov. 29, 1955, reported on the crash, saying the baby had been born premature that morning. The infant was placed in an incubator, where she remained for four months. Hopper, however, said that while she was in the hospital her father tried to disconnect her from the incubator because he was upset at how much the care was costing. The hospital summoned the police to restrain him, Hopper said in one of the interviews.
“He basically couldn’t stand the thought I was alive,” Hopper said.
In March 1956, she was finally strong enough to go home with her parents…
Anti-abortion groups use Penny Hopper’s story to demonstrate why abortion should be banned.
Pro-abortion groups use it to demonstrate why abortion should be safe and legal. Coat-hanger abortions will resume, and they endanger the life of the mother.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article278586634.html#storylink=cpy
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“I know a lady. . . .”
Well, he passed the first test for being a Republican Party presidential candidate. He’s a liar.
The most horrifying spectacle in the GOP debate was when a moderator asked who would support Trump if he was convicted. Six of the eight candidates said yes. Only Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie did not raise their hand. The other six would lend their support to a man convicted of attempting to sabotage American democracy.
Agreed. This was truly horrifying. They support a man who has just been determined by a judge and jury to be a rapist and who faces 91 felony counts for the most serious of crimes against our country, including theft of classified, top secret documents and attempting, by several concurrent means, to overthrow our duly elected government.
Disgusting
Simple explanation is birds of a feather stick together.
Those six and Traitor Trump are all fascists.
DeSantis is a notorious liar. He collects anecdotes regardless of their truth, even if the tales are seventy years old, to rile up his base. Let’s also remember he would invade a sovereign neighbor, Mexico, and blow up the cartel’s drug labs. It’s all juvenile hyperbole to impress his extremist base. He tries to get attention by making provocative statements. Otherwise, he is just another whining troll and totally forgettable.
You have this guy cold, RT!
I don’t think anyone is keeping count of DeSantis’s lies. Still, this wasn’t his first lie. Like all fascists, he lies all the time but Traitor Trump is still the Emperor of lies.
There are different levels of infinity.
Trump is the highest.
This is what passes for evidence in the Repugnican Party of today–bs memes embellished month after month in the Reichwing blogosphere.
And here is Mike Pence lying about what the Bible to support his entirely un-Bibilical account of abortion:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-pence-and-the-book-a-master-class-in-disingenuous-biblical-interpretation/ar-AA1fQn5b?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=60ccad5734a449b8b02d6e5c54417303&ei=14
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them–Deut 30:19-20, KJV
This is Moses speaking to the people before they cross the Jordan River to occupy Canaan.
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Jer 1:5
This is God speaking to the prophet Jeremiah, saying that he planned for the prophet to come to earth to preach.
So, Pence the Dense conflates two separate passages from two separate books written hundreds of years apart, neither of which is on the topic that he claims the passage to be about.
Neither has anything to do with abortion, which was acceptable under ancient Hebrew law.
Pence must know this, surely. And if it does, he is a liar. If he does NOT know this, then his claim to be some sort of expert on the Bible–someone who really cares about it and has studied it carefully–is bullshit.
Another Republican liar.
When Pence rePence for his lying, Trump will be trumped by Justice.
But not before.
Not holding my breath waiting for justice for these creeps.
From Bloomberg
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/when-will-trump-be-in-court-these-are-the-dates-to-watch/ar-AA1ebeO1?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8960df8e0be44a938a4cdf3130f71ae9&ei=6
DateEvent
Oct. 2, 2023 Trump Organization civil trial
Jan. 15, 2024 Iowa caucuses
Jan. 15, 2024 E. Jean Carroll civil trial
Jan. 23, 2024 New Hampshire primary (tentative)
Feb. 6, 2024 Nevada primary
Feb. 24, 2024 South Carolina primary
Feb. 27, 2024 Michigan primary
March 2, 2024 Idaho caucuses (tentative)
March 4, 2024 Federal election conspiracy trial
March 5, 2024 Super Tuesday primaries (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia)
March 12, 2024 Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Washington primaries
March 19, 2024 Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio* primaries
March 23, 2024 Louisiana primary
March 25, 2024 Manhattan “hush-money” criminal trial
April 2, 2024 New York (tentative), Rhode Island and Wisconsin primaries
April 23, 2024 Pennsylvania primary
April 30, 2024 Connecticut primary
May 7, 2024 Indiana primary
May 14, 2024 Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia primaries
May 20, 2024 Classified documents trial in Florida
May 21, 2024 Kentucky and Oregon primaries
June 4, 2024 District of Columbia, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota primaries
July 15-18, 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee
Nov. 5, 2024 Election Day
Sources: Associated Press, Frontloading HQ, court documents
Note: Primaries not yet scheduled: Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming and US territories
Two cases were brought by the Justice Department, another by state prosecutors in Manhattan and most recently, Georgia state prosecutors filed a racketeering indictment against the former president and 18 codefendants. The trial date for the Georgia case remains up in the air.
It will be just as you said.
There will be no Justice coming from the Justasses.
The big problem with this big lie, just like all big lies put out by the people in elected positions, they will be believed by people with the herd mentality who will never accepted the facts that these big lies throw out so they, the members of the herd, will blindly follow them. This is no different than what happened in Jones Town many years ago. The herd drinks the coolaide and will never realize their minds have been poisoned.
This is how they operate.
To use the right’s decades old mantra, they “DUMB DOWN” the American citizenry. They use their supporters who claim “Why do those people always get a break and attention (or regulations) – no one cares about my problems.”
They rile crowds, use single words and acronyms like Pavlov get rally goers to salivate.
They use one-off stories as as evidence something occurs everywhere
When asked for evidence of a story, it’s “yes I have evidence that happened, but I can’t divulge it because they are afraid” (a State legislator’s favorite response when confronted in a hearing).
What are the debate headlines, the buzz, the internet memes and tweets and whatever else they use in ALL media from networks to respected newspapers, not just the right’s media.
The exPresident’s threatening “support me or else” photo (a la Putin)
The abortion story.
It doesn’t matter that desantis’ story is a single story – 60 years old – and misrepresented. It gets extrapolated to what is going on everywhere today.
Temperatures go below 50 in the south and they condemn global warming.
A protester dies on January 6, is a martyr among their ranks, and the event is treated like a tourist visit.
One person wears a mask and is vaccinated and dies and that’s proof to them the doctors are wrong mandating it.
etc. etc.
When did American’s get so dumb that they question nothing and buy everything these loudmouths say. Perhaps because the “leaders” they love scream at authority and scream about “those” people are always getting a break.
So they tell the one-off story, have an example of one book in a library with an inappropriate picture, or a parent protesting about a teacher supporting a child in class with two mommies.
This story is about abortion at six weeks pregnancy, right?
Rest assured that mainstream media, like the NYT and all of the others, are correct. The views of Pence nor DeSantis’ about abortion are totally unrelated to Catholic theocracy.
and, not, nor,
Speaking of fact-checking the debaters on abortion …
At Slate, Brandon R. Grafius (a bible scholar and seminary dean) fact-checks Mike Pence and his use of scripture to support his position:
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/27/mike-pence-and-the-book-a-master-class-in-disingenuous-biblical-interpretation/
Thanks for all your posts, Diane!
Chris Cotton