Latest news with #LIFEAct
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
People Are Absolutely Outraged Over A Black Woman In Georgia Being Forced To Carry A Pregnancy To Term — Even Though She Is Legally Dead
Note: This article contains mention of medical abuse and loss of life, including that of an infant. Adriana Smith is a 30-year-old Black nurse and mother in Georgia. She was about nine weeks pregnant with a boy in February when her boyfriend woke up to her gasping for air in her sleep and gurgling. Her mother told the media that her daughter had sought treatment at Northside Hospital the previous night and was released after being administered medication, but no CT scans or other tests. Smith was taken to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta "with severe head pains," according to MSNBC. "A CT scan showed blood clots in her brain, and soon physicians declared Smith to be brain-dead." She has now been on life support for over 90 days. The murky legality around this centers on Georgia's LIFE Act, a law banning most abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy once "fetal cardiac activity can be detected" — aka Georgia's heartbeat law. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the bill into law in 2019, but it was only invoked once Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022. Officials seem to be in disagreement about the interpretation of the law, though. The office of the Georgia Attorney General issued a statement reading, "There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death. Removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy." However, Ed Setzler, a Republican state senator who sponsored the 2019 bill, said he thinks it's "completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child [...] I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital is acting appropriately." Medical staff at Emory, where Adriana Smith worked, have been ignoring the wishes of her family in favor of the law, which leaves a glaring gray area in the case of a legally dead mother. Brain death is "the legal and medical standard for death in the United States." Smith's mother and family have expressed that they've had virtually no say in her medical care or that of her fetus. "She's been breathing through machines for more than 90 days," her mother said. "It's torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there. And her son — I bring him to see her." The family has reportedly been by her side every day since she was admitted to the hospital. Smith's young son reportedly thinks his mother is just sleeping. According to Atlanta television station WXIA-TV, "The plan now is to keep Smith alive until doctors believe the baby can survive outside the womb — likely at 32 weeks gestation." That would mean 10 more weeks on life support; Smith's family said doctors have told them there are no other legal ways to proceed. "This decision should've been left to us. Now we're left wondering what kind of life he'll have — and we're going to be the ones raising him," Smith's mother said. She told WXIA-TV that the family is concerned about the health of Smith's baby, as doctors have told them he has fluid on the brain. "[Adriana] is pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he's born," Smith's mother said. Many people have taken to social media to express their outrage over the anti-abortion legal and medical system that has allowed Adriana Smith to be kept alive by machines for the sake of preserving her pregnancy. Related: This Reporter's Reaction To Donald Trump Talking About The Declaration Of Independence Is Going Viral "I'm the mother of a brain-dead son whose organs were donated," said TikTok user Jennifer Comstock (@positivejen) in a video earlier this week. "People need to understand what it's like to keep a brain-dead body alive." She goes on to explain that it took time for the hospital to stabilize and prepare his organs for donation and to find suitable recipients because of his blood type. "So I sat in that hospital bed with him for two days, because despite the fact that he was legally dead, that was my baby, and I wasn't leaving him in that hospital alone," she says. "During that two days, the amount of interventions they had to do to keep my son's body was unbelievable," Comstock says. "Obviously, he was on a ventilator, but you also can't regulate your own heartbeat. You can't maintain your own blood pressure. They're giving you all kinds of medications [...] His kidneys were failing. They had to give him medication to fix that." She goes on: "They would fix one thing, and another thing would go wrong. And sitting there watching it felt wrong. It was horrible watching what they were doing to him." But, as Comstock says, there's one major difference between the case of her 30-year-old son and that of Adriana Smith: "My son wanted to be an organ donor, and that is why we continued to do it. And my son saved lives," she said. "But I don't think you guys understand. This woman is not in a vegetative state; she's not in a coma. She's dead." "Her body is not functioning. Her brain is not producing the hormones required to sustain a pregnancy." "This family is being put to torture. I did this of my own free will, and I am still traumatized," she concludes. Related: A Clip Of Donald Trump Getting Angry After Being Fact-Checked Is Going Mega Viral, And It Sums Up His Entire Presidency In A Nutshell People replied to the video in droves. This person wrote about how having a body that is technically "alive" is only one part of the equation in a healthy pregnancy. Someone else echoed what Jennifer said in the video about the crucial difference in having the choice to be kept on life support; she replied, "Pregnant Georgia women seem to belong to the state not to them selves." A lot of other folks just said that what's happening to Adriana Smith is wrong: Another creator, Grace Wells (@0fficial.c0wgirl on TikTok), made a video with the heading, "What does it mean to be born of a corpse?" "Adriana smith deserves to rest. Her family deserves peace. Humanity deserves safety from birth by corpse," she captioned the video. "You think that a brain-dead person just isn't conscious anymore and their body's all working and so their body's just gonna grow the baby either way?" she says. "That's not what's happening." "It is not pro-life to force a child to be born of a corpse," Grace repeats twice. "And what are the medical implications of a fetus gestating in the chemical environment of a corpse, of a brain-dead person who has to be on medication to regulate every single bodily function because their brain cannot do it because they are dead?" "You can't even eat lunch meat when you are pregnant. But you think it's pro-life to force a brain-dead person, a corpse, to be medically kept some semblance of alive to force the birth of a 9-week-old fetus?" Wells says. "If that's something that you can justify, we have very different interpretations of what is sacred," Wells says. "What does it mean for us as a society that we are attempting to do this as a political stunt? Force a child to be born of a corpse." She also says that if Smith's child is born healthy enough to grow up, they will "live with the public political fear of keeping their dead mother on life support [...] following them for the rest of their life. That's not pro-life. That's not compassionate. It's not Christian. It's not healthy. It's disgusting. It's desecration of a corpse. It's horrific." The comments resoundingly agreed. Some pointed out how Adriana Smith's case joins the long history of medical abuse and racism toward Black women. "It's so sick. I also think about trauma and medical debt they are laying on her poor family," this person wrote. One user pointed out the hypocrisy of this case within the "pro-life" movement. And finally, someone shared the haunting reality that may await Adriana Smith's unborn child: What are your thoughts? We want to hear in the comments. Also in In the News: An Ad Against Far-Right Voters Is Going Viral For Being Both Terrifying And (Kinda) Accurate Also in In the News: People Are Sharing Their Honest Opinions Of Elon Musk, And Boy, This Is Brutal Also in In the News: 15 Extremely Difficult Things People Do Not Understand About The United States, And, Honestly, They Got A Point
Buzz Feed
a day ago
- Health
- Buzz Feed
Dead Pregnant Woman, Adriana Smith, Forced To Carry
Adriana Smith is a 30-year-old Black nurse and mother in Georgia. She was about nine weeks pregnant with a boy in February when her boyfriend woke up to her gasping for air in her sleep and gurgling. Smith was taken to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta "with severe head pains," according to MSNBC. "A CT scan showed blood clots in her brain, and soon physicians declared Smith to be brain-dead." She has now been on life support for over 90 days. The murky legality around this centers on Georgia's LIFE Act, a law banning most abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy once "fetal cardiac activity can be detected" — aka Georgia's heartbeat law. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the bill into law in 2019, but it was only invoked once Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022. Medical staff at Emory, where Adriana Smith worked, have been ignoring the wishes of her family in favor of the law, which leaves a glaring gray area in the case of a legally dead mother. Brain death is "the legal and medical standard for death in the United States." Smith's mother and family have expressed that they've had virtually no say in her medical care or that of her fetus. "She's been breathing through machines for more than 90 days," her mother said. "It's torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there. And her son — I bring him to see her." According to Atlanta television station WXIA-TV, "The plan now is to keep Smith alive until doctors believe the baby can survive outside the womb — likely at 32 weeks gestation." That would mean 10 more weeks on life support; Smith's family said doctors have told them there are no other legal ways to proceed. "This decision should've been left to us. Now we're left wondering what kind of life he'll have — and we're going to be the ones raising him," Smith's mother said. She told WXIA-TV that the family is concerned about the health of Smith's baby, as doctors have told them he has fluid on the brain. "[Adriana] is pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he's born," Smith's mother said. Many people have taken to social media to express their outrage over the anti-abortion legal and medical system that has allowed Adriana Smith to be kept alive by machines for the sake of preserving her pregnancy. "I'm the mother of a brain-dead son whose organs were donated," said TikTok user Jennifer Comstock (@positivejen) in a video earlier this week. "People need to understand what it's like to keep a brain-dead body alive." She goes on to explain that it took time for the hospital to stabilize and prepare his organs for donation and to find suitable recipients because of his blood type. "So I sat in that hospital bed with him for two days, because despite the fact that he was legally dead, that was my baby, and I wasn't leaving him in that hospital alone," she says. "During that two days, the amount of interventions they had to do to keep my son's body was unbelievable," Comstock says. "Obviously, he was on a ventilator, but you also can't regulate your own heartbeat. You can't maintain your own blood pressure. They're giving you all kinds of medications [...] His kidneys were failing. They had to give him medication to fix that." She goes on: "They would fix one thing, and another thing would go wrong. And sitting there watching it felt wrong. It was horrible watching what they were doing to him." But, as Comstock says, there's one major difference between the case of her 30-year-old son and that of Adriana Smith: "My son wanted to be an organ donor, and that is why we continued to do it. And my son saved lives," she said. "But I don't think you guys understand. This woman is not in a vegetative state; she's not in a coma. She's dead." "Her body is not functioning. Her brain is not producing the hormones required to sustain a pregnancy." "This family is being put to torture. I did this of my own free will, and I am still traumatized," she concludes. People replied to the video in droves. This person wrote about how having a body that is technically "alive" is only one part of the equation in a healthy pregnancy. Someone else echoed what Jennifer said in the video about the crucial difference in having the choice to be kept on life support; she replied, "Pregnant Georgia women seem to belong to the state not to them selves." A lot of other folks just said that what's happening to Adriana Smith is wrong: Another creator, Grace Wells (@0fficial.c0wgirl on TikTok), made a video with the heading, "What does it mean to be born of a corpse?" "You think that a brain-dead person just isn't conscious anymore and their body's all working and so their body's just gonna grow the baby either way?" she says. "That's not what's happening." "It is not pro-life to force a child to be born of a corpse," Grace repeats twice. "And what are the medical implications of a fetus gestating in the chemical environment of a corpse, of a brain-dead person who has to be on medication to regulate every single bodily function because their brain cannot do it because they are dead?" "If that's something that you can justify, we have very different interpretations of what is sacred," Wells says. "What does it mean for us as a society that we are attempting to do this as a political stunt? Force a child to be born of a corpse." The comments resoundingly agreed. Some pointed out how Adriana Smith's case joins the long history of medical abuse and racism toward Black women. "It's so sick. I also think about trauma and medical debt they are laying on her poor family," this person wrote. One user pointed out the hypocrisy of this case within the "pro-life" movement. And finally, someone shared the haunting reality that may await Adriana Smith's unborn child: What are your thoughts? We want to hear in the comments.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What rigid support for 1849 abortion law says about Wisconsin Republicans
Delegates at the Wisconsin Republican Convention approved a resolution calling on the state to enforce the state's 1849 abortion law. Granted, it was just a symbolic vote May 17 with no legal authority. But it reveals that grassroots Republicans — both here and across the country — are still embracing rigid views on abortion, despite a barrage of headlines detailing the deaths and suffering of women under similar bans. And it made me wonder: Do we all live in different realities? Because in today's world of algorithms, relentless news cycles, and a never-ending stream of content, it's entirely possible that we all live in different realities when it comes to the news we consume. Social media feeds and search engines curate information based on our past behavior, reinforcing our existing beliefs and filtering out what might challenge us. Letters: Former Gov. Tommy Thompson omits real reason for rough Supreme Court race For going on three years, I've been reading the heartbreaking stories about women harmed by abortion bans from across out country. Is it possible that others aren't seeing them at all? For example, had any of the attendees at the WISGOP convention heard about: Adriana Smith, a pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain-dead in February and is being kept alive, against her family's will, because of the state's law banning abortions? Doctors told the family that because of Georgia's LIFE Act, Smith must be kept alive until the fetus can live outside of the womb, probably at 32 weeks. Smith's pregnancy is only about 22 weeks along. Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain, who died in Texas because doctors hesitated, afraid of prosecution under their state's abortion ban? Or Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old mother, who died less than a month after Georgia passed its abortion law after waiting 20 hours to receive critical treatment? Elizabeth Nakagawa, a Coast Guard commander, who nearly died after miscarrying because medical personnel waited—paralyzed by fear of legal repercussions. Or Jaci Stratton, who was told by hospital staff in Oklahoma that 'we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us" before they could provide life-saving abortion care. Her molar pregnancy meant that her fetus would never become a baby—but the law demanded she flirt with death before doctors could help her. Though deeply alarming, these instances merely scratch the surface of what is becoming a widespread issue in states with the most restrictive laws. In addition to these stories, countless other women have survived but suffered at the hands of providers opting for riskier treatments and delaying care because of the language used in their state's abortion ban. I'd like to believe that perhaps some of the most staunch anti-choice advocates are genuinely ignorant of how quickly abortion bans lead to maternal deaths, infections and dangerous complications. Because the alternative is that they have read these stories and just don't care. I don't write that lightly. But how else can we explain pushing for 19th-century laws in the face of 21st-century evidence that these bans are putting lives at risk? Some might call this a matter of moral conviction. But what kind of morality demands the painful deaths of women to prove a political point? Abortion is health care. That's not a slogan but a fact supported by virtually every major medical association in the country, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Abortion care is a necessary component of standard treatment protocol for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and fetal diagnosis incompatible with life. Bans do not prevent these conditions, they only prevent timely treatment. And these laws don't operate in a vacuum. Every restriction breeds confusion, fear, and delay. Every vague statute pushes doctors to consult lawyers instead of focusing on patients. Every criminalized medical procedure sends a message: we don't trust women, and we don't trust the people who care for them. The Wisconsin resolution might be nonbinding, but it is still revealing. It lays bare a movement that appears more interested in punishing abortion than in grappling with its consequences. It exposes a political stance where symbolism takes precedence over safety — where women are expected to serve as ideological props instead of autonomous human beings. To the lawmakers and activists still supporting an abortion ban in Wisconsin, I ask again: are you reading these stories? Do you see what's happening to women in Texas, Idaho, Oklahoma, and beyond? Is that what you want for women in Wisconsin? It is not enough to say the resolution is symbolic. Symbols matter. They reflect priorities. They telegraph what we value. And right now, this one sends a loud, clear message: that even preventable deaths of women aren't enough to change course. If we're reading the same stories, then it's time to stop pretending this is a theoretical or political debate and starting acknowledging lives are on the line. Kristin Brey is the "My Take" columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Abortion is health care. WI GOP ignores dangers for women. | Opinion
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Sponsor of Georgia abortion ban spared trauma of watching brain dead loved one carry fetus
Doctors and lawyers at Emory Healthcare – but mainly the lawyers, I suspect – say that under Georgia's anti-abortion law, they are required to keep Adriana's body functioning as the fetus inside her develops. (Photo by John McCosh/Georgia Recorder) By most common measures, the life of Adriana Smith ended three months ago, when a tragic series of undiagnosed blood clots left her brain dead, with no hope of recovery. Yet today, in a hospital room in Midtown Atlanta, Adriana's body is still being kept alive by machines, without regard to her family's wishes. As someone who has been there, I know how difficult and extremely personal that decision can be, but I can only imagine what it must be like to have that choice stripped away, as it has been stripped away from Adriana's loved ones by people who don't know them, who know little of their circumstances, and deal with none of its consequences. In Adriana's case, she was nine weeks pregnant at the time the blood clots hit, which under some readings of Georgia law has meant that what remains of Adriana's body is now under government control until the fetus can be safely extracted. 'She's been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,' April Newkirk, Adriana's mother, told 11Alive News. 'It's torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there.' Doctors and lawyers at Emory Healthcare – but mainly the lawyers, I suspect – say that under Georgia's anti-abortion law, they are required to keep Adriana's body functioning as the fetus inside her develops. They are erring on the side of caution – not medical caution, but legal caution. The law in question is the 'Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act.' or the LIFE Act. The main sponsor of that law, state Sen. Ed Setzler, says it's working as intended in this case. 'I'm proud that the hospital recognizes the full value of the small human life living inside of this regrettably dying young mother,' Setzler told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 'Mindful of the agony of this young mother's family, the wisdom of modern medical science to be able to save the life of a healthy unborn child is something that I trust in future years will lead to great joy, with this child having a chance to grow into vibrant adulthood.' Proud as he might be, Setzler isn't the one who has to watch what's left of his daughter lay lifeless in that hospital room, not alive exactly, with machines performing basic life functions, week after week. He isn't the one who has to explain what's happening to his seven-year-old grandson, Adriana's son. If the fetus survives, he also isn't the one who will have to raise the child. Doctors have warned Adriana's family that the fetus has fluid on its brain, with unknown consequences. 'She's pregnant with my grandson,' Newkirk said. 'But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he's born,' she said. 'This decision should've been left to us.' According to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, however, Emory Healthcare and Setzler are misreading the legislation. 'There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,' his office said in a statement. 'Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy'.' Carr's reading of the law seems to be correct. As his statement indicates, the law defines abortion as 'the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy,' and the withdrawal of extraordinary life-maintenance measures on a brain-dead woman would not fall within its restrictions. But this is the problem when you try to write a law into black and white, when you try to legislate what is right and what is wrong when dealing with decisions that are so personal, so intimate. Moral certainty sounds good, it may feel good, it may play well in a political campaign, but it cannot possibly make such hard choices from a distance. The law cannot act more wisely or with more love than would those who know the situation best. This story first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, a member with the Phoenix in the nonprofit States Newsroom.
Refinery29
6 days ago
- Health
- Refinery29
Adriana Smith's Case Isn't Fiction — It's Forced Pregnancy In Real Time
A 30-year-old woman was found unresponsive after days of complaining about headaches. She's rushed to the nearest hospital, where she is pronounced brain-dead. Her grieving family — including her mother and 7-year-old-son — are weighing their options when hospital officials tell them they do not have any options. Because the woman was nine weeks pregnant, she and her unborn fetus are considered two individual patients. The mother must remain on life support to protect the life of the second patient, whether her family wants that or not. No, this is not Season 3, Episode 9 of the Handmaid's Tale. It is the reality of a Black woman in 21st century Georgia and the woman's name is Adriana Smith. So who is to blame for this callous disregard of patient's and her family's grief? That would be Georgia's Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act — a three-year old abortion ban also known as a heartbeat law. First introduced in 2019 but not enforced until the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022. The legislation prohibits terminating a pregnancy once cardiac movement is detected, which can happen anywhere from weeks six through nine of pregnancy. In Adriana Smith's case, this law means her body is no longer her own. She is now being treated as an incubator. Since she is already in a coma, the few exceptions to the LIFE Act — like protecting the mother's health — don't apply. Smith is now approximately halfway through her pregnancy and will remain in this liminal space for at least another twelve weeks. Renee Bracey Sherman,co-author of Liberating Abortion, a book that delves deep into the racist and sexist history of abortion legislation, details the resulting abortion stigma many birthing people endure, and charts a path forward for reimagining reproductive justice and abortion care. As she and her co-author, Regina Mahone, write in their introduction: 'People of color are the canaries in the coal mines: whatever bad happens, happens to us first.' When discussing this case in particular, Sherman noted that this case highlights the ways our bodies are not valued beyond our capacity to give birth. While conservatives celebrate the move as a victory for local abortion bans, including Georgia State Sen. Ed Setzler who sponsored the LIFE Act, a woman's life hangs in the balance and her family's ability to make informed decisions has been robbed from them. Sherman puts it bluntly that child-bearing is heralded in such a toxic way, Adriana isn't able to die with dignity because of the perceived value of her body as a carrier. The core of this issue is agency and the removal of all options and personal choices by people disconnected from Adriana and her family's needs. 'I'm not saying that we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy, but [what] I'm saying is: We should have had a choice,' said Smith's mother, April Newkirk. The hospital's official response? 'Our top priorities continue to be the safety and wellbeing of the patients we serve,' an Emory Hospital spokesperson told NBC News. But that can't be true because the safety and well-being of Adriana Smith has been cast aside along with the potential ramifications for the unborn child. According to Newkirk, doctors have seen fluid in the child's brain which can lead to blindness, immobility or even death. After months of being forced to continue this pregnancy, Smith's family may very well have to grieve with another loss against their will. Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Atlanta's Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation, has been on the frontlines too many times in the fight against repressive reproductive legislation and the ways Black women are dismissed in matters of their own healthcare. 'Adriana lost her life because her symptoms were ignored when she initially sought care,' Jackson says. 'She complained of headaches and was sent home without a full evaluation. [Now,] Smith's body has been kept on life support machines in an attempt to sustain the pregnancy despite her death.' For Jackson this is confirmation of what she has seen across her career: that Georgia lawmakers' interpretation of 'pro-life' doesn't include the lives of everyone and certainly not Black, queer, transgender or low-income people. 'When policies and attitudes are not rooted in lived, layered, human experience, outcomes like Adriana Smith's are not anomalies — they are devastatingly inevitable results,' says Cheyenne Varner, founder of The Educated Birth. Varner is a certified doula and health equity advocate who pushes for well-informed patients to be partners in their personalized care. Unfortunately, restrictive legislation like the LIFE Act and other abortion bans prevents people from having a voice when it comes to their own bodies. 'Black women and birthing people's lives, bodies, and families remain vulnerable in a system that was never designed — and is still not upheld — with our dignity in mind,' Varner underscores. ' Child-bearing is heralded in such a toxic way, Adriana isn't able to die with dignity because of the perceived value of her body as a carrier. ' The other harrowing concern at the center of this devastating situation is the question of who is responsible for the months Adriana Smith is spending on life support and the birthing process to retrieve her unborn child. In an interview with NBC News, April Newkirk seemed to allude that the family is bearing at least some of that burden. 'Every day that goes by, it's more cost, more trauma, more questions,' she said. 'The only winners here are the politicians who supported the six-week abortion ban,' says Dr. Mia Robbins-Aguilar, co-founder of Middle Georgia 4 Choice. 'The rest of us suffer the indignities and injustices while fighting for reproductive justice.' Robbins-Aguilar works on the frontlines of non-discriminatory reproductive healthcare and knows this case is just one example of how a family's pain is compounded by the financial burden they endure, along with the long term medical and developmental issues they may potentially face as the fetus continues to progress. To navigate the murky waters ahead, the family has created a GoFundMe, another sign of just how much they've been left to work through this heartbreak. The GoFundMe platform was initially created to help users secure resources for their next great ideas. Now, the same platform has now become a last resort to so many emergency healthcare needs that it has been normalized as a supplement to insurance. In 2021, even GoFundMe made a statement on Twitter acknowledging the uncomfortable truth: ' Millions of Americans are struggling to pay for life's essentials right now... But GoFundMe was never made to be a source of support for basic needs, and it can never be a replacement for robust federal relief.' Now as April Newkirk has had her hands tied behind her back, that same 'pro-life' government is doing little to nothing to assist her with the fallout of the decision they have forced upon her. Moments and situations like this can stop us in our tracks and make us feel helpless, but we do have power and it lives in how we respond. We must reiterate that policies like these do not serve the people they're intended to protect. 'We may not be able to change these laws as swiftly as we feel the urgency to do so — but we can change how we educate, how we train providers and how we resource parents and birth workers to see these patterns for what they are,' Varner emphasizes. 'We can refuse frameworks of 'protection' that rob families of autonomy,' she continues. 'We can build tools, tell stories and implement systems that honor full-spectrum reproductive justice — including the right not to be overridden or used by any other person or entity in life or in death.' We can and must also champion a proactive vision of better care than our current system provides through electoral politics as well. 'Reproductive justice invite[s] curiosity,' Bracey Sherman and Mahone write in their book. 'The reproductive justice founders provided a framework for activists to bring into being a world in which every person has the ability to decide if, when, and how to become a parent.' ' The more we speak out, the more we create a culture that puts pressure on lawmakers to answer for the policies they've created that weaponize our bodies. ' Anyone running for office with even the slightest oversight to reproductive care needs to be thinking of how to make that a reality, as Rep. Lauren Underwood did when introducing the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021. If passed, this legislation would expand access to midwives and doulas, extend care for postpartum and breastfeeding periods, invest in research to address maternal mortality and mitigate risks to birthing people and their children. Acts like this are just the beginning. We need to codify a national standard of bodily autonomy and do away with cookie-cutter abortion bans that don't account for our range of needs and desires. Above all, we must continue to seek affirming healthcare from those who understand and see us in our fullness. 'We are still seeing patients and still providing abortions in accordance with the law,' Jackson reminds us. 'The ban is extreme, but it is not a total ban.' By continuing to seek care and fund spaces devoted to our needs, we force the nation to recognize that reproductive care is healthcare and that one isn't complete without the other. 'It is easy to become despondent in a vacuum but when we gather and share stories, we fuel each other in more ways than one,' encourages Robbins-Aguilar as she harkens back to the 1970s. 'As a psychologist, I encourage people to be mindful of their boundaries but to also push themselves to find creative ways to contribute to the efforts to regain reproductive freedom.' The more we speak out about Adriana Smith and others negatively affected by abortion bans, we create a culture where these laws can be repealed and replaced by putting pressure on lawmakers to answer for the policies they've created that weaponize our bodies. The more we insist on designing our own political futures, the more likely we are to get one worth living in.
