The hospital in Georgia didn’t “save a life”

They had that chance when Adriana Smith sought medical care. They could have saved her & her fetus.

What they did was carry out a medical experiment without consent.

They failed her in life & then robbed her of dignity in death

She was only 9 weeks pregnant when declared brain dead.

There’s no medical precedent for keeping someone’s body on organ and tissue support at that stage in a pregnancy.

The fetus was not viable. It couldn’t survive the death of its mother.

The state and the hospital made a choice to experiment on a black woman, and didn’t take into account her wishes or the wishes of her next of kin.

Regardless of the outcome, the lack of consent is why we’re enraged.

This was done to further a far right pet project, fetal personhood.

This wasn’t about saving a life.

They don’t care about the life of her child.

They want to establish legal precedent to declare embryos and fetuses full people under the law.

If you don’t understand what that means, it would mean an end to IVF & abortion. It would mean that even miscarriages could be investigated for murder charges.

It would give a legal right to a fetus that no other person has, the right to use another body without ongoing consent

It would effectively criminalize pregnancy, while making life unsafe for everyone who has a uterus.

It would put women second.

Misogyny means we’re already treated as incubators a lot of the time, this would legalize it.

If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, you aren’t paying attention.

If you still think it’s about “life”, consider this.

Georgia’s infant mortality is one of the worst in the US, and in 2022 (after the fall of Roe) they saw a 13% increase in infant deaths.

Even worse, black babies have the highest rate of infant deaths across the US (10.86 per 1000 live births)

Yet they experimented on a black woman and a black baby and none of the pro life crowd are doing anything to improve their survival odds.

Because it’s not above life, it’s about control. Subjugation. Taking our reproductive freedoms and autonomy.

This was a clear cut ethical violation and a grotesque medical experiment.

I hope more than anything that Chance is ok, but the outcome doesn’t change what happened

What they did was wrong and will put many lives in jeopardy if it is allowed to set precedent

If you want to be pro life? Fight Medicaid cuts. Fight cuts to food assistance. Lobby for better access to healthcare, housing, childcare & social supports

Help lower infant mortality

Also, believe patients. Especially women.

We shouldn’t talk about Adriana’s tragic story without mentioning that it was completely preventable

Had the hospital done their job & ran tests, she would still be here.

Misogyny & misogynoir kill. Every damn day.

Call it out. Keep shouting. Don’t let anyone forget.

#uspol #adrianasmith #reproductivehealth #fascism #racism #misogyny #misogynoir #MyBodyMyChoice

How Breeze Liu, an advocate for digital abuse victims, got Microsoft to scrub 142 nonconsensual explicit images of her hosted on Azure after months of struggle (Wired)

https://www.wired.com/story/deepfake-survivor-breeze-liu-microsoft/
http://www.techmeme.com/250221/p4#a250221p4

Thinking of Aaron Swartz today & I’m stuck on this photo - he & OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (both circled) each scraped 1000s of docs but one did it to make the knowledge free for all while the other did it to make $$$$ through probabilistic plagiarism. The US DOJ only came after one of them & the other is feted by tech bros and executives.

Thank you Aaron for so much, for RSS, for Markdown, for Creative Commons and more. I’m sorry our society failed you.