Forge For Society

If you’re acquainted with recent news, you’ve probably heard about Adriana Smith. So much focus is placed on what happened to her, but it’s so much more than that. Her experience and death as a result of medical injustice stands as a perfect example of the flaws inherent in “heartbeat laws”.

To the uninitiated, “heartbeat laws” come in many forms, but the desired goal of implementing them is largely the same no matter where they crop up. The sole purpose is to criminalize abortive procedures after there’s a detectable “heartbeat”, effectively making abortions illegal once a fetus reaches six weeks of gestation.

These laws do not take into account the problems inherent in laws that don’t allow for any nuance. Nuance being a concept that almost all conservatives and right-wingers, not to mention many moderates and some liberals fail to grasp (a topic I’d like to broach at a later date).

In this case, Adriana Smith ended up at Northside Hospital after experiencing severe headaches, where it was discovered that she had multiple blood clots. Eventually, she was declared brain-dead at nine weeks pregnant.

More than a case

However, Adriana is more than just a case or a headline.

Her family, friends, and even those she served all have high praises to sing of Adriana. Her family described her as “a ray of light”, and during her career as a registered nurse (RN), she touched the lives of her patients. One of whom even remarked that Adriana kept in touch with them even after they were no longer under her care.

It’s tempting in these situations to focus on the optics of someone like Adriana dying under such horrific circumstances because it help illustrate the weaknesses in policies that regressive states like Georgia have enacted, but it’s important to not forget the person behind the story. While details about her are sparse outside of interviews with her friends and family, it reminds me of the word “sonder”.

It may not be a word from the Oxford English Dictionary, but it carries weight and exemplifies the feeling I have when I think about her plight. Its origin is from author John Koenig’s blog, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

The feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.

Adriana had a whole life that so few of us have ever been aware of, with the grand majority of us only seeing a thin slice of her existence through videos, news, and articles. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of her life was that she was a mother to a seven year old boy.

Through relation, we can ignite the fire

It’s difficult to imagine what her family must be going through, and possibly even more difficult to internalize the pain they’re experiencing. Adriana’s parents lost their daughter, her partner lost his loved one, her son lost his mother, and her community lost a dedicated and driven caregiver.

My firm belief is that many folks on the left hold the views they have because they value empathy, which is why I mentioned “sonder” above. Adriana had a complete life that was inextricably intertwined with everyone around her, and our loss of her from this world invokes a pain that can so easily be ignored if we choose to do so.

To me, I think about what it could be like to lose my wife, Jennifer. What it would be like to then be raising our son Malcolm on my own. Situations like the one that Adriana and her loved ones have been suffering through kept me awake some nights. The scenarios that played through my head where I pictured losing the love of my life due to barbaric and antiquated laws, implemented by backwards-thinking men and women, in part drove me to get a vasectomy – the sheer cost of having another kid also played a significant role too, but that’s a conversation for another time. I won’t even touch on the clear medical malpractice that led to this outcome in the first place. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that Adriana’s symptoms and concerns were ignored by medical professionals until it was too late, but that’s outside the scope of this post.

My point here is that while this did happen to Adriana, her family, and her friends, that this can happen to anyone. It’s true that we shouldn’t only act out of concern that we could experience the same pain, but we should be driven by this fact. We should also all be driven by the desire to prevent this from happening to others as well, because no seven year old child should need to be told that his mother is dead and not sleeping. No woman should go to the doctor for medical care, only for her complaints to be ignored and the situation worsens until it’s too late to intervene. She shouldn’t become pregnant and not have the option to get the medical care she needs. Her family shouldn’t be forced to leave their dead daughter on life support because the hospital’s hands are tied by insane, draconian laws, only to be stuck with the bill in the end.

What can even be done?

Like with any wound, we must apply pressure. While keeping the pressure on lawmakers and society isn’t a short-term solution, it’s about the long game. That’s part of the reason I decided to start writing in this blog. Writing here is one way that I know I can get my voice out there, even if the audience it reaches is so small. That’s not all that can be done though.

We can make this pain heard:

• Relentlessly contact your elected officials
• Voice your sorrow and anger through any means necessary: blogging, TikTok, BlueSky, yelling at clouds, etc.
• Tell your friends and family, because not everyone is chronically online like I am
• Coalesce and coordinate with other like-minded folks

It’s my express goal to use this as a platform to gather others that believe the same things I do and to ignite a fire in as many people as possible to take action. We live in a frightening time and place right now, but it doesn’t need to stay that way. We must forge the future we wish to see, even if we don’t have the fortune of seeing it ourselves.