A Dead Woman Being Used As An Incubator

Plus: What's happening at our house lately, and a June writing challenge I gave myself.

At Our House Lately

Welcome to month of June! The house is full once again. Oscar is home from his second year of university in Dublin. Betty is home from her first year of university in Paris. Our niece, Sophie, is with us for one more month (possibly longer if she can get a visa and come back at the end of the summer).

And relatives from England — our niece Cierra, her husband Ben, and their daughter Clem — have been visiting this week as well. Cierra writes the Block-by-Block City Guides, and Barcelona just came out two weeks ago!

Ben Blair’s brother Jim is coming at the end of this month, and Olive will be coming home in July for about a month.

And to make things even more fun, the weather has been delightful. We’ve been able to swim at a nearby lake and rent pedal boats on the Orne River.

But we’re not quite on official summer break yet. I know the month of June means that school is now out for most of the U.S., but here in France, school gets out the first week of July. So Flora June has another month to go, and that month includes the first big national exam that students in France take, called the Brevet. We are trying not to lure her away from her studies too often, as we adventure with our visitors.

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My June Writing Challenge

I’ve decided to give myself a June Writing Challenge: publish something to Substack every day of this month. Publishing something could be a newsletter, or a live video, or even a community chat. I’m taking this self-imposed challenge for two reasons:

1. I’ve been on Substack for several years now. I was a fairly early adopter and many of the features that are offered now came long after I had already started. Because of that, I haven’t really gotten to know or made use of these new features. And I would like to try them out and see if there are any I want to make a regular part of my work here.

2. The ongoing crush of news stories has altered how I write. I’ll think of something I want to write about, start developing it, and then feel like I missed the moment, as the news cycle has already moved on. My hope is that a daily publishing practice will help me come up with a better way to respond — via writing and discussion — to what is happening in our world.

My plan for this month-long challenge is to keep most messages short and easily digestible, and I’ll decide on a publishing schedule for July and beyond once I get a hang of things this month.

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The News Has Moved On, But I’m Still Thinking About

There is a dead woman in Georgia, who is being kept breathing via machines, and without her family’s permission, while her body is used as an incubator. This is happening based on a Georgia law that bans abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. Her name was Adriana Smith. She was a 30-year-old nurse and mother. You can read the story as reported by NPR.

This is disturbing, and deeply wrong, on many levels.

-She’s a Black woman, and there is a long and horrific history of Black women’s bodies being experimented on by doctors and scientists.

-Her brain death was due to medical neglect. She experienced a severe headache and went to the hospital. They did not give her a CT scan or do any tests. Just gave her some medicine and sent her home. By the next morning, just could barely breath and her family called 911. She had blood clots in her brain and was declared brain dead. Medical neglect is a common experience for Black women, and all women.

-Her family didn’t have any choice in the matter.

-This is experimental medicine. Adriana Smith is brain dead and it’s unclear if a healthy pregnancy is possible. There are signs that if the fetus reaches full-term at all, there could be serious brain damage.

-There are reports that her family is being held financially responsible to pay for this extremely expensive medical experimentation.

-She was only 9 weeks pregnant. Click here to see what 9-week pregnancy tissue looks like. I don’t believe we would even recognize it as an embryo with the naked eye. And a quick reminder: the 40 weeks of pregnancy are counted starting approximately two weeks before conception. So a woman who is 9-weeks pregnant, actually conceived around 7-weeks ago.

-Notice how the Georgia law says “fetal cardiac activity” and not “heartbeat”. Why? Because there is no heartbeat at 6 weeks. Six weeks is so early in pregnancy that many women don’t even know they are pregnant. Studies show most women’s menstrual cycles are highly variable, and women may not even have noticed their period is late.

-It is a ridiculous distortion of the Georgia law to say that taking Adriana Smith off of the machines that keep her body breathing is an abortion. No abortion medication would be ingested. No abortion procedure would be performed. To try and use the Georgia law that forbids abortions, as an excuse to use a dead body as an incubator, is indefensible both legally and morally.

-If the fetus does not survive, other attempts will be made on other women’s bodies, with the reasoning that these attempts are “advancing science”.

-If a live, full-term baby is grown from this incubation, anyone with a working uterus is at risk for having their body used as an incubator against their will.

I understand that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not.

There is currently a concerted effort to scaremonger people about a dwindling population, and to pressure women to have babies even if they have no interest in becoming a parent. The current administration has even suggested awards or cash incentives for having babies.

If women insist on not bearing children, they could be “accidentally” injured — by their significant other, or by the State, via police violence — and impregnated and used as an incubator. And the man who impregnates the woman may even get a monetary reward from the government for the pregnancy, and then go on to sell the baby for a fee to an adoptive couple. There would be a lot of incentive for men to use women’s bodies as incubators.

And let’s remember: pregnant women are already at great risk. The number one cause of death among pregnant women is murder by the man who impregnated them.

I think about Adriana Smith every day. She deserved so much better.

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I think that’s it for today. I hope your June has many bright spots mixed in with the awful stuff. Feel free to comment on anything I mentioned above, or whatever is on your mind.

kisses,
Gabrielle