Hi, everybody, welcome back to the nonprofits.
So I didn't think human incubators were going to be a thing, but it's twenty five and it's a new fashion trend. So Tracy, let's talk about all the very very bad things gotcha.
Something is rotten in the state of Georgia. This year, a thirty year old woman by the name of Adriana Smith met her end by brain death on February nineteen. That said miss Smith was approximately two months pregnant at the time of her demise, and Georgia doctors have informed her mother that until Adriana's pregnancy has reached a term length where delivery can be attempted, her family has no say in what to do with her body. The body
will continue to be used as an incubator. Reminiscent of a particular Hulu show, This nightmare is horrifying, to say the least, and should give us all cause to panic, as any government that can posthumously use your body as an incubator for the unborn can also posthumously use your body as a blood production device, or steal your organs from your family after death, or any other number of
horrifying tableaus. The old adage I've heard about pregnant people having less rights than a corpse seems to fall flat when turns out they only have less rights than non pregnant corpses.
So super fun.
Yeah, sorry, everybody, this is the reality we are now living in. So to be clear, So, Adriana was three years old and she was declared brain dead in February of twenty twenty five. Despite she is leally dead, she has been kept on life support due to Georgia's strict abortion laws, which prohibit abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, typically around six weeks into pregnancy.
I live in Florida.
This is the same law this situation reads. Is profound concerns. Profound concerns about Balie Atonmy as Smith's family has been denied the right to make decisions regarding her medical care, highlighting the extent to which reproductive laws can override personal and familiar agency even after death. So there's a little bit more about this on an ap News article that I put in in our links.
But I'm deeply, deeply concerned.
I don't know if you guys remember Terry Shaibo back in the early two thousands, where she was a woman that there was a big legal battle to keep her alive, alive or not on life support, because it was two separate families on different sides, and that was a big discussion about you know, what what people intend and how you know, even just you know, families arguing about this. Now,
let's include the state. Let's include the fact that you got pregnant and like Audreyana did can and it's just basically an incubator, which I find very disrespectful to her especially this was not her intention as to just respect her as like a human being, and also to like the state has effectively told her family, you don't get to decide what happens with your loved ones course and what you want to do. We get to hold onto
it until it does the baby making thing. And by the way, we're going to hand this child onto you that you didn't really have a discussion on if you wanted to raise it or not. We're going to make that decision for you because I was going to have to take care of that kid.
So Rob rob so who putting putting that, you know, point forward?
Who is financially responsible for this child? And when it's brought the term under the state and forced life support, like who's.
Going to pay for it?
Presumably the husband and the dad. As I I've been thinking about this one because this is a curious situation because she's already brain dead, which is a separate language point that it might bring up another time where it's like, why do we say brain dead because we define brain dead to be actually dead and we're only using it to still mean the body is still an incubator. But sure, fine, whatever, semantics are very important.
I almost feel like.
Oh no, I hope you can convince me otherwise. Maybe. I actually don't know if I find this as appalling as I did a couple days ago, and I want to explain why.
Go ahead, Rob, go ahead.
Most pro choice would be in mine as well, would be the idea of she should have the right of the say of her own body, especially in the case of a parasite. But she's not using her own body anymore, so it's not it's not a it's not a typical case, so I can see why this has even come up at all.
So I don't see it as yeah.
But I'm gonna The only quoble I'm going to point out though, is that I and the article did not mention what the intention was with the fetus if you know she had ended her life and that she was no longer able to participate in that decision process. So that's one conversation that we could be having, and two that the state is now removing the people that might know her intentions involvement in making that decision.
Oh yeah, which is also super bad. And to actually answer your question from earlier, who's going to pay for it? There is, there is, there is a father. Presumably they're going to pay for it. I was going to say, this is the clearest position of pro birth ever, because they're going to get that baby by any means necessary. I just wanted to throw in the spanner of just like, ah, most of my pro choice arguments are for the person using their actual body, of which he's not using your body anymore.
So like I'm going to do my job and give quibbles and ask follow up questions.
My job. See, how do you feel about this? This is so great? I love living and a patriarchy. It's so great.
It's fantastic. So Rob, I don't see this as I don't see this as a discussion where being pro life or being pro choice or being pro birth, or being pro whatever in that particular discussion, I don't find that to be relevant, and I think you said something to that effect. I don't find it to be relevant at all.
The as humanists, which I believe all in the panel are one of the things that you that I've dealt with in my journey along humanism is okay, Well, the person who is dead is no longer using their body, so why don't we eat it. Why don't we supply it to people who would do terrible things to it as a substitute for doing that to people who have
who are still in their body. The reason that we allow you to have control to a certain extent and to have your family have control over your body after you die is because that is conducive to your mental health while you are alive. To guarantee that. Now they've removed her family from the decision making process, which is already part of a problem, and we don't have access, as you both have said, to her wishes at all.
So this is a complete disregard for one of the core principles of the handling of bodies after death, that you ultimately get to decide. I don't get to take your organs, even though I need them after you die, unless you consent to it beforehand. Same thing with this child or this fetus we want to refer to it, I don't really care U. Unless we have the express permission of Adriana before her death, we don't get to
do this. This is this is organ donorship in the extreme against against her will because we don't have access to her will.
I'm really glad you specifically said organ donorship because as we were bringing this up, I wonder it's like, what if we have no idea what she is and I'll bring this back around, what if she was an organ donor. I could see a thing saying, well, she's just we're just going to donate the entire body as the incubator. And I completely agree. Yes, You're completely right in that the thing that I am now convinced of is not necessarily the thing that is actually happening, like the incubation ship.
It's the everyone around her has been pulled away from their ability to participate within the death process. The state is interfering.
That is.
That is the problem that I've now had because I thought wondered, like, well, what if what if this was happening to you in not a particularly religious sense, would other people be upset? And then I thought extreme organ donor, and like in that choice, I don't know if I bring up.
A really you bring a really good point. Someone that lost a very dear friend that they were totally brain dead, that their mother had to make the terrible decision, you know, heartbreaking decision to beat them off of life support because she was a trained nurse and knew what the actually what was actually going on, which we're talking about like
brain dead versus like death death. You know, I have to imagine that what you what you brought up about, like not being able to go through the process, you are delaying it and and then you're adding the burden on.
Of a child.
Yeah, you're adding that to what is already a traumatic experience where a young woman she's only thirty, you know, is you know, not alive anymore. And the state has said, oh yeah, by the way, uh, screw you on actually mourning for your child and everything that's going on. We're going to keep her alive, you know, technically so she can you know, birth, you know, incubate and birth this baby.
It's disgusting one.
And too that the lack of understanding of mental health and trauma that happens to people if you're forced in certain situations is not may not be conducive in the long term to how this child is raised, and we don't know the long term consequences of those things.
I'm hopefully these.
People are kind people and won't raise their child, you know, and understand you know, the situation going forward, but we don't know that, and there's a lot of unknowns here and the fact that the state is saying like, well, screw you, you don't get to make that decision anymore. We're gonna make this, you know, use this woman's body as an incubator, which she doesn't have the right right or not to consent to you.
Yeah, is she still a person? You know? You brought up a good point. Is this personhood?
Yeah? If this was an article that came about due to the wishes of a family that's doing this to their own to their own family, then I think it would end up being extremely different. But Tracy has well compelled me, and the problem is that it is the state, because then that's why we do end up having questions like, well, who's going to pay for it? Because if the family had decided to do this, which they did not, then
like clearly that's being taken care of. But because the state is getting involved, then people are being held hostage into being forced into positions that may not even be aware of or ready for right.
And that's that's the thing that you know, kind of you know, is the sticking point with this particular case. And like and Tracy, you brought up like, by the way, Adriana is a woman of color. Yes, if this was being done let's just just say with like as you point out, like by a wealthy white woman and the exacciny was happening, would would we would there be more backlash,
would they be more reactionary stuff? Or is it this whole idea that you know that still exists in the United States unfortunately that you know, people of color are.
Lesson you know, So I don't know because I can't look into alternate universes where this may have happened to a wealthy white woman, and I don't know how wealthy Adriana was.
But ultimately I think that this can all stem back to a in a built in bias against both people of color and women, and you know, due to intersectionality, especially women of color, where people of color and women often get sub subpar care, either because of flawed scientific understanding of how bodies work that have been infiltrated by racist ideologies, or just due to the infantilization of women in these spaces where it is thought that they can't
make decisions for themselves. And I think that I don't know who. I think it would be. Adriana's mother is her next of kin, because that's who they interviewed in there. It could it could pull from an infantilization of her as well as Adriana.
I can't speak to.
Their rationale because there they aren't really giving one. They're just saying, according to these laws, we must do this well.
Tracy, to be clear, we can make decisions for ourselves because we have that hysteria wandering womb thing, So you need somebody else to come in and tell us how to make decisions. That's the rules, you know, Like that's the attitude of this idea that well, we're going to assume what Audrianna wanted, even regardless regardless if she was
going to carry it, carried that baby to term. The state doesn't get to make the decision, because the whole idea of having mixed of chin is that you bestowed those wishes onto your family, and then they are the ones that can make knowing you the best what decisions that you would make for your body if you were, you know, standing outside yourself.
I'm like, do this do that?
As Tracy was saying, I think it was somewhere. I think I read this somewhere about this case. She went to the hospital. She went to the doctor and said that she had had pain, and then they I don't know if the article meant to be as flippant about it as it seems me, but she went in and said I've had pain, and then they gave her some pills and said go away. Probably not like that they gave yeah, And then to.
Be fair, I've experienced that in the hospital, So the chronic.
Pain, I've experienced that.
So if she did experience that, not surprised, but also at the same time not great.
It was only in the last few decades that women that female phenotypically female persons were used in clinical trial studies for medications. Prior to that, they were using primarily, if not exclusively, phenotypically male individuals and then just extrapolating that, Okay, so women are like little men, so we can just give them less. And then there's the built in stuff. You know, it's not surprising to me this is happening
in the Land of Traders. But there's the built in presupposition or pre preconceived notion that in a lot of doctors' minds that black people are just sturdier than white people are. And this hearkens back to a time when
they were used as farming equipment regularly. And so when you have the intersectionality of thinking that a person of a specific race is a stir you're than a person of another race, as well as that you know, these people are infantilized and don't need as much medication, it can make.
A really tough cross section there.
For for we're considered to have a higher pain tolerance.
Yeah, it's pain subjective.
Subjective measure that measure it several times, and I don't think they can.
Yeah, it's it's completely subjective.
So and and also too, like what kind of really really bothers me about this is the fact that that racial bias is built into it. This bias about woman is built into it that we are not automis people.
We're basically incubators, uh and.
Root mares under the current perspective of the people that are making these laws, you know, and I don't think there's enough appreciation for why this matters. But we can argue like what she wanted intend or not intended. I don't know this woman, I don't know her family. I don' not her intentions. But the fact that the state gets to come in and tell you what you can and cannot do with your body, to the extreme that
your courts can be used. That's the most disgusting thing about this, because not only they're finding guests, you know, people you know that can have children, whether or not you know, we get to make the decisions that even after death, you don't get to make those choices.
We're going to make them for you.
I think that you're one hundred percent right. I think that both of you have hit on it, and we've talked about it several times that the biggest issue here is that we just don't have access to what Adriana thinks and if she I rob the thing you brought up about the organ donation, if she were registered as an organ donor and clicked the box that said, you know, all usable, then you know what, I would back the hell off, only in the.
Case that the families were also down. That's that's I agree.
I disagree with on that point. It's not they don't have a say in whether she can donate her organs.
Yeah, oh no, no, that's true, because then it would just go to other people anyway. But that the reasonable. It's harder in this particular case for that because then who has ownership of the baby. They still have to take ownership of the baby.
But as as you said, the paternal figure.
Right if they wanted it, I'm still saying that the family should have a say in what is going on to any extent because there's another person involved, presumably if they're going to try to get a live birth. I'm saying.
Yeah, So you're saying, because they're going to be accepting custody of the child they get.
To, which they are organ donating.
Yes, yeah, okay, I see what you're saying. So there'd be a lot of fuzziness to.
Navigate, right, But but it's all their choice.
If this exact thing happened with their intention, I'm in But this also, as you said, because of just medical attention, should never have happened in the first place. We should never have even gotten to this position. It's unfortunate that they were in this position that we could argue about family or state, but it would have been really lovely if we never even got here.
It would have been fantastic.
The state has no business in this affair.
So I just want to include a quote from the Ratcle from Monica SYSM Monica Simpson, exec director of such a song, the Lee Plantiff.
And the lawsuit challenging Georgia's abortion law. Like so many women, Adriana spoke of herself.
She's for us what she felt in our body, and as a healthcare provider, she knew how to navigate the medical system. Simpson said, noting that by the time that
Smith was diagnosed, it was already too late. So the fact that she was diagnosed was, you know, something that was going to cause the situation to happen, and that she was pregnant by the time everything came to fruition, and the fact that rollbucks uh reprojector rights are rolling back, and the fact that she's a woman of color, it was too late.
So it's kind of a bummer of story everybody. I'm sorry, but this is.
The reality of the world we're living in and if you want to know more about what the government is doing to re propractive with what rights in our current situation, please