What do you think about when you read the words “bodily autonomy” – that sacred principle claiming we should control what happens to our own bodies.
Sounds reasonable, right? Yet today, we’re witnessing a real-life Handmaid’s Tale episode unfold in Georgia with Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black nurse and mother who was declared brain-dead in February but remains on life support against her family’s wishes because she was nine weeks pregnant.
Modern medicine tells us brain death equals legal death. The person is gone. Yet Georgia’s LIFE Act – passed in 2019 and enforced after Roe was overturned – doesn’t care. It bans abortions once “fetal cardiac activity” is detected (typically around six weeks) and includes a revolutionary concept called “fetal personhood” that grants fetuses the same constitutional rights as fully formed humans.
Smith’s body is being maintained as an incubator for a fetus that doctors say has fluid on the brain and may not survive birth. Her five-year-old son visits, thinking mom is “just sleeping.” Her family is trapped in a grotesque limbo – emotionally and financially devastated as the hospital bills pile up.
“This decision should’ve been left to us,” Smith’s mother April Newkirk told reporters. “Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have – and we’re going to be the ones raising him.”
This isn’t just about abortion. It’s about who owns your body when you can no longer speak for yourself.
The cruel irony? Smith – like many Black women – was failed by our healthcare system long before this ethical catastrophe. She sought treatment for severe headaches but was dismissed with medication and no tests. The next day, blood clots in her brain rendered her brain-dead.
This tracks with America’s abysmal maternal health statistics. Black women have a maternal mortality rate of 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births – more than three times higher than white women (14.5). Even worse, while rates for white and Hispanic women dropped significantly in 2023, the rate for Black women actually increased slightly.
Bioethicists and legal experts disagree whether Georgia’s law actually requires keeping Smith on life support. Thaddeus Pope from Mitchell Hamline School of Law argues “removing the woman’s mechanical ventilation or other support would not constitute an abortion.” But Georgia’s Republican state senator Ed Setzler, who sponsored the 2019 law, praised the hospital’s actions, saying it “highlights the value of innocent human life.”
The question remains: whose life has value?
Certainly not Smith’s – she’s already dead according to medical consensus. And what about her family’s rights to grieve and move forward? Or her son’s need for closure?
What’s happening in Georgia isn’t an anomaly – it’s the inevitable result of laws designed to subordinate women’s bodily autonomy to fetal rights. It reflects a society increasingly comfortable with treating women as vessels rather than fully autonomous beings.
Georgia’s law wasn’t an accident. It was purpose-built to establish fetuses as “persons” under the 14th Amendment – part of a deliberate strategy to dismantle reproductive rights. The law explicitly states: “It shall be the policy of the state of Georgia to recognize unborn children as natural persons.”
This is the slippery slope reproductive rights advocates warned about for decades. First, restrict abortion access. Then, establish fetal personhood. Finally, use these principles to control women’s bodies – even after death.
What’s particularly disturbing is how these laws disproportionately harm women of color. Smith’s case combines the fatal consequences of both racial health disparities and restrictive abortion laws – a perfect storm of systemic failures.
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, put it plainly: “Adriana deserved to be trusted by her health care professionals. Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions.”
Instead, they’ve endured months of trauma, massive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to grieve properly.
If conservatives truly valued “life,” they’d address the maternal health crisis that makes the United States the deadliest developed nation for giving birth. They’d tackle systemic racism in healthcare. They’d ensure quality prenatal and postpartum care for all women.
But this was never about saving lives. It was always about control.
Smith’s story should shake us awake. When the state can commandeer your deceased body to serve its reproductive agenda – we’ve crossed into territory that would make Margaret Atwood’s fictional Gilead look reasonable by comparison.
Under His eye, indeed.