Dead Woman, Living Politics: Adriana Smith’s Diabolical Fate

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A Black Executive Perspective Now presents need to know

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with the award-winning hyphenated Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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Dr.

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Burton, what do we need to know?

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Nsenga Burton: Good afternoon and

welcome to Need To Know with Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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I am she.

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And today we're gonna be talking

about a topic that is, um.

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Yeah, very, very, uh, difficult topic to

talk about, I think for a lot of people.

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Um, but you may have been, uh,

you may have been following

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the story of Adriana Smith.

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Um, a young mother, uh, and nurse,

uh, in Atlanta, Georgia, who

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unfortunately became brain dead.

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And when, uh, she became brain

dead, it was found to have

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been nine weeks pregnant.

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And because of the.

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Heartbeat Bill.

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Uh, basically a law in Georgia that says,

uh, fetuses have the rights of humans.

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She was forcibly kept alive versus the

wishes of her family, um, to let her go be

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with God, um, in order to have the baby.

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So she is a, uh, mother.

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Of another child with her husband,

partner, she has an entire family

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and she, her wishes were not to

be kept alive by artificial means.

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So I'm bringing you this because

there is a lot of discussion about

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reproductive rights in this country.

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There are a lot of anti reproductive

rights bills and the challenge with them

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is whether where you fall on the, you

know, whether you're for pro, whatever.

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Uh, people have reproductive rights,

is that family business is family

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business and decisions need to be made

for you and yours by you and yours,

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and so you can't consider all of the

possibilities that could happen because

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I just have to believe that even people

who are pro-life would understand what

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her mother calls the terror quote.

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And trauma quote of having to revisit the

death of your child every single day until

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someone else says, okay, this fetus has

grown enough where we can take this fetus.

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So they, uh, took the fetus.

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'cause they keep saying, and

here's the other thing about,

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uh, media that pisses me off.

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They keep saying she

gave birth to this child.

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She did not give birth

to this child, the baby.

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If you wanna call it a baby, the

fetus grew and became a baby,

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um, basically in a dead body.

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So anyone who's been a parent, anyone

who's been pregnant, imagine how

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important the environment is for a child.

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I.

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At this precarious time.

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Now, we've talked extensively about

maternal mortality rates, how they're

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negatively impacting all women, but

black women, specifically state of

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Georgia, has stopped counting them.

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At one point, they were the nation's

leader in maternal mortality

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as it relates to black women.

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They no longer count maternal mortalities.

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Um, and just like with COVID,

when they stopped counting

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the number of dead people.

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That is a way to skew numbers so

that you do not look like you are

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participating in a system or a process

that is having negative consequences

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on a certain population of people.

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Having said that, she did

not give birth to this baby.

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The baby was taken from her via Cesarean

section C-section, and media has been.

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Poorly, poorly, poorly communicating

to people that she gave birth.

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Now, there are different

ways of giving birth.

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There are different ways of bringing

babies into the world, but they should

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not conflate the two when in fact

someone is brain dead and cannot push.

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They cannot be experiencing

any of the labor, any of that.

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They are not knowledgeable of any of it.

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So that is something different.

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That is something different and

you do a disservice to people.

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And I think it, it could be in an effort

to continue to promote people voting

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for pro-life, um, legislation that has

negative consequences on women's bodies,

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uh, particularly when women are not

allowed to make their own decisions, their

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families, their spouses, their parents.

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Are not allowed to make

decisions for them.

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Their, their decisions for themselves

are not even being followed, uh,

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when traumatic incidences occur.

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And so now the family's traumatized

and the family's on the hook.

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I also have to say this,

there is a GoFundMe.

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Why?

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Because the family's on the

hook for the cost of keeping

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this woman alive for months.

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This happened in February.

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We are in June, about to be in July.

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How do we know that they do not care

about this woman and this child because

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the family should not be on the hook

because it went against their wishes.

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Right?

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They're following the law, right?

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Not what she wanted, not what her family

wanted, and because they're such wonderful

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people, our attorney general, that would

be George's Attorney General, has said.

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There was no obligation for the

hospital to follow the law in that case.

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Could have said that in February.

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Comes out with it in June.

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What does that mean?

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Or how am I experiencing that?

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This case has been a, a, a, a hailstorm

to make to, to, uh, to be polite about it.

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Um, and that means now because he.

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Who's up for reelection is now

under siege because of what has

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happened to this woman, or they

allowed to happen to this woman.

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Um, he used to distance themself

from this decision that was made.

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It also means that by distancing

themselves from this decision

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that is made, they can continue to

say they are not responsible for

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the financial, uh, ramifications.

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So I'm gonna wrap this up.

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The boy was born,

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taken from the mom.

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And he's one pound and he's in

the NICU and they say he's okay.

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So we don't know what that means.

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You know, we've all, uh, I won't say

we all, but many people who've had

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children have been around children.

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You have nieces and nephews or

what have you, who've been in

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those precarious situations, um,

knows that anything had happened.

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He grew up and be a, a, have a

full life or he'd be damaged.

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There's lots of things that can happen.

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Um, so we don't even know what

the cost would be, but what I

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do find interesting is that.

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People will spend millions of dollars

on a GoFundMe, contribute millions of

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dollars to a police officer who has

killed an unarmed boy like Trayvon

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Martin, a life Jordan, a life.

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We keep going, um, but we can't get

over a million dollars for Adriana Smith

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at life.

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And the life that was brought forth

from her by being cut out of her

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by people who followed the law

instead of what is she wanted and

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what her family wanted for her body.

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And by the way, her 3-year-old thought

his mom was asleep all that time,

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then burying her on Friday.

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So what I need you to know is

that elections have consequences.

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You can keep talking about all this.

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Oh, this is what we gotta do.

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You know, I believe in this and

that you cannot control everything.

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You don't know what is in store for you.

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We don't even know if we're

gonna be here tomorrow, truly,

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especially with 47 in office.

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So I just encourage you to know the

law, to understand voting, and to

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understand what the ramifications.

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Are for those votes, and if you

truly believe as you say that God

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is all knowing, then how do you

know that God did not intend for

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her to come to him on February 25th?

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So sorry, I couldn't be happy today.

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I'm not.

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Um, I'll do better than the next one.

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I probably will.

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Um, but I just think you need to know

that women should have rights to their

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bodies, and there's a reason why we say

we need to have rights to our bodies.

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This is a great example of why tune

in next week to an A Black Executive

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Perspective podcast with Tony and Chris.

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And to need to know with Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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I will see you then.

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Be happy, be focused.

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Keep your head on the swivel and be safe.

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Bye.

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A Black Executive Perspective