In a new television ad, a Lakeland couple discuss the wife’s experience of being unable to obtain an abortion last year despite a fetal abnormality that meant her baby had no chance of survival.
Deborah Dorbert sits on a couch with her husband, Lee, in the 30-second commercial released Thursday by Floridians Protecting Freedom, a group pushing for passage of Amendment 4. A caption identifies the couple as “Deborah and Lee, Lakeland, FL.”
Deborah Dorbert, wearing a dark-green dress, speaks in a halting voice.
“I remember the doctor … handing me a baby boy … that was blue,” she says. “And I just held him, ‘cause he was so cold.”
As reported in The Ledger and other outlets last year, a doctor diagnosed Dorbert at the 23-week mark of her pregnancy with Potter syndrome, a condition in which the fetus does not receive sufficient amniotic fluid and does not develop normal kidneys and lungs. The doctor told Dorbert that the baby would not survive for more than a few hours after birth.
Lee and Deborah decided that they wanted to terminate the pregnancy as soon as possible. But the legal department at Lakeland Regional Health, with which the doctor was affiliated, declined to approve the procedure, citing a 15-week limit on abortions that the Florida Legislature passed in 2022.