Adriana Smith deserved more. All Black birthing people do.
What happened to Adriana Smith should never happen to anyone. Especially not in a country that claims to value life.
Wednesday Wisdom
“May ease and joy find you in your seasons of uncertainty.” ~ Alex Elle
Morning Musings
Back in high school, I was adamantly pro-life. I blame it on attending an ultra-conservative all-girls Catholic school, as well as having an extremely limited worldview at the time (you have to remember, Facebook and social media as we now know it, didn’t exist until I was a freshman in college).
Every January, most of my classmates and I would pen essays and poems for the annual Pro-Life March in Washington, D.C. School was also closed that day and I boarded a bus with other students to attend the march. I vividly remember seeing white trucks with graphic pictures of fetuses parked along the parade route and thinking (again, naively) who in their right mind would murder innocent babies.
That was then. This is now.
Adult me is radically feminist, pro-choice, liberal, progressive, queer…everything the nuns said I shouldn’t be (though honestly, they should’ve seen it coming when I wrote an op/ed in defense of Janet Jackson and the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” when I was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper…it was just a boob, people!!).
I wrote about my change of heart in an essay for HelloGiggles back in 2016, but essentially I grew up and recognized the pro-life propaganda my school had force fed us and I realized I didn’t agree. For me, being a feminist means choice…and that choice extends to what women (and all people, really) can do with their bodies.
Which is why the news of Adriana Smith—the Georgia woman who was declared brain-dead in February at nine weeks pregnant, yet kept on life support until this week because of the state’s horrific six-week abortion ban—has rocked me to my core.
We already know the Black maternal mortality rates in this country are abysmal. Across the U.S., Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes compared to white women; yet, 84% of maternal deaths in the U.S. are classified as preventable.
“Everyone deserves the freedom to decide what’s best for their families, futures, and lives. Instead, anti-abortion politicians like Donald Trump and Governor Brian Kemp are forcing people through unimaginable pain,” Rep. Nikema Williams, an Atlanta-area Democrat told The 19th back in May. “Adriana’s story is gut-wrenching. It’s also a painful reminder of the consequences when politicians refuse to trust us to make our own medical decisions.”
And now inhumane legislation has caused one family (and presumably, many others) immeasurable grief. Smith’s son, Chance, was “delivered” via emergency C-section last Friday weighing 1 pound, 13 ounces and now fighting for his life in the NICU.
I’ve deliberately put “delivered” in quotation marks because Smith, nor her family, consented to this. As author and cardiologist Shirlene Obuobi wrote on Threads put it:
I am disgusted by our healthcare system; however, I am not surprised. This country hates Black women and Black birthing bodies. This healthcare system was NOT designed with us in mind. We have to fight tooth and nail to simply be heard and even then, sometimes it’s not enough. The gaslighting is real. The racism is real. The trauma is real.
Adriana, we failed you. You deserved more. You deserved better. Your family deserved better. And we will keep fighting until being pro-life actually means caring for the life of the mother as well, until Black lives actually matter in a country that deems us disposable, until all people actually have a choice about what to do with their own damn bodies. Rest in peace, Adriana. You deserve.
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What I’m Reading
Inside Mara Brock Akil’s writing retreat on the Lower East Side (New York Times)
Beyoncé made country music history. The Grammys just redefined what counts. (The 19th)
White Supremacy is apocalyptic for everyone (Hammer & Hope)
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This is devastating. As a mother of a child around her son's age, I'm shattered thinking about his visits to see her in the hospital and her parents having to tell her son she will never wake up (or worse, finding ways to keep him hopeful). Living life without her to support him, it's so wrong. And that newborn who is so small and helpless, and who also didn't ask for this. Another child who, if he can survive, will also not grow up with his mother. There are no words for how horrible this is...in 2025.