At the Fox News Republican presidential debate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told a tale about a lady called Miriam “Penny” Hopper. According to DeSantis, Penny was abandoned in a doctor’s pan after surviving repeated abortion attempts.
However, skeptics on social media disregarded DeSantis’ account and said she was fabricating the whole thing. Liberal writers like Steve Schmidt and Jill Filipovic panned DeSantis’ account, calling it implausible and weird.
Hopper, a native of Florida, said it was “amazing,” “shocked,” and “humbling” to find that DeSantis shared her story on a national scale. Her experience was originally recounted in a pro-life campaign by Faces of Choice, which premiered at the 2020 March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Only ten states in the United States require reporting on kids delivered alive following an abortion attempt, making it impossible to count the number of abortion survivors in the country accurately. Since 2019, the Abortion Survivors Network, an advocacy and support organization for those who have survived abortions, claims to have contacted approximately 650 individuals.
Medical documents reveal that CEO and founder Melissa Ohden survived an attempted saline abortion. She says the public isn’t aware that these procedures can fail.
To combat these “misconceptions” and to “amplify human tales that dispute the myth that ‘Abortions don’t fail’ and ‘There’s no such thing as an abortion survivor,'” her organization will declare September “Babies Survive Abortions Awareness Month.”
Hopper’s experience will be highlighted in the ad because she wants expectant moms worried their lives would be derailed by having a child to know there is hope. To assist women in recovering and making pro-life decisions, groups like Abortion Survivors Network have established safe spaces for them to go. Hopper noted that her father did not want her when she was a newborn, but he has come to adore her. Her father’s last words were, “Honey, I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
Hopper’s narrative shows forgiveness is a powerful force, even in tragedy.
