This is a rush transcript. Copy cannot be in its final form.
Amy Goodman: This is now democracy!, Democracysynow.org. I am Amy Goodman with Juan González.
We are now turning to Georgia, where there are growing concerns about the emergency of a pregnant woman who was declared dead for brain, but lives against the wishes of her disturbed family for three months due to the ban on abortion in Georgia. Adriana Smith is a 30-year-old mother and nurse who suffered a medical emergency through blood clots in the brain in February and was legally declared dead. At that time she was about nine weeks pregnant. She is now about 22 weeks pregnant, but doctors kept her in breathing machines because her fetus was old enough to have a demonstrable cardiac activity. Georgia's “heartbeat law” prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat has been determined.
This comes when the Attorney General of Georgia said that the heartbeat in Georgia does not keep any medical specialists after the death of the brain for life support, and has given a narrow explanation that the quote “removing life support” has no action with the purpose of ending pregnancy. “
Georgia's mothers and child mortality rates are among the worst in the country, with black women died twice as high as white women.
We have now accompanied two guests. In Washington, DC, Mini Timmaraju is with us, President of reproductive freedom for everyone, earlier Naraal Pro-Choice America. And in Atlanta, Monica Simpson, Executive Director of Sistersong, who accompanies the National Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, who has a lawsuit against Georgia in Georgia, and argues that his six -week abortion ban refuses people in the life rescue of Georgia.
We are now greeting them in democracy! Monica Simpson, we start with you. Can you now talk about the situation of what the family wants for their beloved, brain -dead loved one who is pregnant and the doctors consider life support?
Monica Simpson: Thank you for having me.
It is a bad situation that we have to do here in Georgia. And we have to constantly navigate in this system, which shows us again and again that in this state it is black and pregnant where access to care for so many people is so far out of reach, and the limits and the criminalization that we constantly navigate are now navigating with this abortion ban.
Adriana deserves to be here. What we know about her story is that she did what she should do as a nurse. When she found it out and she could feel it in her own body that something was wrong, she went to the doctor. She went to take care of herself that she needed and she was sent home. If the doctors had been – everything they could have done, we might have had another result for Adriana. But unfortunately that didn't happen, because unfortunately that doesn't happen for so many black women in this country. You will not be familiar if you go to the doctor's practices. You are not familiar if you say that something is wrong with your bodies. You are not familiar if you say that you need access to care. And unfortunately that happened with Adriana.
And so her family is now fighting so heavily. You should be able to mourn. You should be able to take care of yourself and all family members who have to deal with this ordeal. Unfortunately, you have to navigate so many unanswered questions. You have to navigate something that you don't have to do what is a ban on abortion that is associated with this problem, which should not even be in the game at this specific moment.
JUAN González: And in Georgia we talk about one of the countries that are one of the worst mothers and child mortality rates in the country, especially for African-American women and children. Could you talk about it?
Monica Simpson: Absolutely. We have to do with deserts of mothers in Georgia, right? Over half of our counties have no access to an ob-GynCare is unreachable for so many. We are also a state that has not yet expanded Medicaid, and we know that we are still fighting for Medicaid, to which Americans have access, which means that thousands of people fall in the cracks every day and have no access to fundamental needs in healthcare. If you add this to a state that has now set up a six -week abortion ban, it is a very, very hard environment for people to gain access to what they need in relation to their reproductive health care.
Amy Goodman: I mean, it's incredible. The Attorney General of Georgia, Chris Carr, published an explanation in which he explained that the six -week ban on abortion did not require medical specialists to keep women alive in life after being stated for brainoll, Monica.
Monica Simpson: What I find very interesting about the times when we are in ourselves is that this abortion ban has created so many obstacles for humans. There were too many people who tried to find out what it means if that means, and this is the problem with which we have to do here. It is not cut and dry. It's not black and white. It is something that we have to navigate again and again.
At the end of last year we lost two other black women because this abortion ban was set up for them. We lost Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, right? These are two black women who were also pregnant in our state who wanted to end pregnancy and against the very real obstacles that this abortion ban set up for people.
And so it happens constantly when we get these stories because we understand what the landscape for people in Georgia really looks like because this abortion ban is present is that it is not cut and dry here-we are not cut and dry here. We have to deal with people who have to navigate too many questions in real time, whenever it should be that we should have access to real-time health care that we need so that we are able to thrive and live our healthy life in Georgia. And this is not the case with this currently existing abortion ban.
