This article is brought to you by:

The Labora Collective 🌱

Where innovation meets advocacy. Where your voice shapes the future of women’s health.

What is Labora Collective?

One place where Black feminism often diverges from mainstream white feminism is in its orientation toward reality as it is, not solely as we wish it to be. We operate in a society shaped by power imbalances, historical trauma, and gendered expectations — and those dynamics don’t vanish because we’d prefer them gone. To deny their presence is to disarm ourselves in a world that demands we meet it as it is.

This is not a deficit in vision. It is, instead, a different order of vision — one sharpened by the knowledge that transformation begins with naming the conditions we inhabit, not the ones we imagine in their place.

Black feminist thought has long resisted the seduction of abstraction when survival is on the line.

The Combahee River Collective, in their 1977 statement, wrote plainly: “We are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression.” That commitment was grounded in the unglamorous labor of engaging the actual, tangible systems that shape our lives.

Audre Lorde called it “the transformation of silence into language and action.” bell hooks reminded us that love is a political act, one that demands honesty about what is, not just faith in what might be. This lineage is not a rejection of hope; it is a refusal to place hope above preparation.

💭 The Emotional Labor Economy

One of the realities we must contend with — one that many prefer not to name — is that much of men’s mental and emotional health work is done by women. We are the ones listening when they cannot speak to anyone else, absorbing when they cannot hold their own emotions, reframing when they cannot make sense of themselves. We are the sounding boards, the peacekeepers, the translators of feeling into action.

This is not merely a quirk of individual relationships. It is a patterned phenomenon with deep historical roots. During slavery, Black women were tasked not only with physical labor but with maintaining the fragile emotional economies of enslaved families and communities — often in the face of their own grief and violation. Under Jim Crow, in segregated economies, and in contemporary poverty, women’s ability to hold and heal emotional wounds has been a matter of survival, both for individual men and for entire communities.

And so this role has been passed down, not only as a cultural norm but as a survival strategy. It can be exhausting, undervalued, and expected without consent. But it is not inherently degrading. In its healthiest form — chosen freely, grounded in reciprocity, and supported by community — it is an act of love and a stabilizing force. The problem is not the role itself. The problem is when the role becomes compulsory, one-sided, or invisible.

🪶 The Myth of Pure Choice

It is easy, from certain vantage points, to declare that women should simply opt out of doing this work. Mainstream white feminism often takes that stance: reject any labor that reinforces patriarchal expectations. But this assumes an abundance of alternatives — emotional, financial, and communal — that are not available to everyone.

Real choice is complicated when you live in systems that punish women for refusing care.

A woman may know she is carrying more than her share of emotional labor, but she may also know that withdrawing it could fracture a family, destabilize her children’s environment, or undermine her own safety. This is not “leaning in” to patriarchy; it is the ongoing work of negotiating survival within it.

The goal, then, is not to pretend that opting out is universally possible, but to create conditions under which it could be. That requires rebalancing relationships so that men are not only recipients of emotional care but contributors to it. It requires shifting norms so that men are expected to be emotionally literate, accountable, and generous with their own labor.

🤝 Coexistence, Not Antagonism

We cannot thrive if our liberation requires permanent antagonism with men. This is not a romantic plea for harmony; it is a practical acknowledgment of interdependence. We build families together. We raise children together. We sustain communities together.

Until we can reproduce, nurture, and protect entire communities without men — and we cannot — our liberation must include them. That inclusion cannot mean excusing harm or accepting imbalance. It must mean holding men to the same standards of care, empathy, and accountability that women have long been expected to meet.

The future we are working toward is one where emotional labor is not gendered inheritance but a shared human skill. Where women can choose to take on this role without penalty, and where men can do the same without stigma. Where the care that sustains us is given and received in balance.

✨ A Vision Worth the Work

Liberation in this context is not about erasing the role of emotional caregiver from women’s lives. It is about making it one of many roles, entered and exited with agency. It is about ensuring that when we give deeply, we are replenished — not left hollow. It is about cultivating relationships, both intimate and communal, where emotional health is a shared project.

Black feminism teaches us to keep our eyes on the world as it is, even as we work to make it something more. That means seeing the current state of emotional labor for what it is: a deeply embedded, historically shaped reality that can harm or heal depending on how we choose to engage with it.

The task before us is neither to romanticize nor to erase it, but to transform it into something sustainable, reciprocal, and liberating.

That is work worth doing. That is work that keeps us alive.

Share In Her Name: Exposing the Cost of Control

Visit Other Labora Collective Platforms:

- Women’s Health: Empowered Care, Informed Choices | Medical Content & Reproductive Justice

Here, clinical analysis meets advocacy. We examine the impacts of policy, provide evidence-based insights, and offer practical guidance for navigating healthcare in times of crisis.

Women's Health

- The Blueprint | Entrepreneurship & Innovation

We drive medical device development, healthcare technology, and business model innovation that centers women’s health outcomes. From concept to market, we’re creating the tools providers and patients actually need.

Blueprint

🔗 Learn more about our work at diosara.com and laboracollective.com

Welcome to In Her Name: Exposing The Cost of Control

Welcome to The Dossier

Welcome to The Cost of Control

This article is brought to you by:

The Labora Collective 🌱

Where innovation meets advocacy. Where your voice shapes the future of women’s health.

Who we are?

Introduction

I used to recoil when people said, “Trump won — that’s what Americans wanted.” Now, I pause. It’s not the optimism that angers me—it’s the erasure.

The refusal to see that the game itself is rigged.

We don’t live in a system where one person = one vote = equal power. The rules have been methodically rewritten to skew outcomes.

What follows isn’t a theory—it’s history, reality, and a call to act.

Historical Roots: Suppression as U.S. Default

• From colonial times to Reconstruction, voting was restricted by race, property, and gender—the idea of universal suffrage was always contested.

• After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment (1870) banned race-based denial of the vote.

• In response, states introduced literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, intimidation, and violence to suppress Black voters.

• The 1965 Voting Rights Act marked a turning point: it outlawed racial discrimination in voting and introduced pre-clearance for states with suppression histories.

• Over time, however, that protection eroded: the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) struck down the pre-clearance requirement, claiming the formula was outdated. That unleashed a wave of restrictive state laws.

The Architecture of Suppression in 2025

Below are the modern levers through which the distortion happens. Think of these as “bugs in democracy” programmed on purpose.

1. Gerrymandering + “Line drawing”

Districts are redrawn to concentrate (or diffuse) certain voters. In GOP-dominated states, maps are drawn so that even if Democrats win a majority of votes, they get fewer seats. (This was part of Operation RedMap in 2010.)

2. Voter roll purges & registration challenges

Voters are removed from registration rolls (for missing a vote, non-response, alleged duplication, or undeliverable mail). These purges disproportionately affect communities of color, mobile populations, and renters.

3. Polling place closures & polling resource starvation

In many minority or low-income areas, polling stations are closed (or consolidated), making travel, wait time, and confusion bigger obstacles.

4. Early voting, mail voting restrictions, drop-box limits

States restrict the times, locations, and methods of early/absentee voting, or impose burdensome signature matching, ID requirements, or signature verification rules that lead to more rejections.

5. Voter ID laws & “voter fraud” narrative policing

Requiring specific IDs (especially ones harder to access for marginalized groups) is framed as protecting against fraud. But empirical research repeatedly shows that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. The narrative is weaponized to justify constraints.

6. Disinformation, intimidation, algorithmic “challenges”

Misinformation campaigns—texts, robocalls, social media—tell voters wrong dates, wrong polling locations, false rules. There are “vigilante” challenges to voter eligibility in real time. For example, a far-right influencer was recently convicted for spreading false info designed to make voters believe they could vote by texting, likely preventing turnout.

7. Courts, judges, and structural entrenchment

When disputes over maps or rules go to court, you often face judges staffed by ideological appointees loyal to the party pushing suppression. That makes many “changes” hard to reverse. Over time, the legal scaffolding protects the system from itself.

8. Overlay: the Electoral College + Senate distortions

All the above happen within a federal system that already distorts representation. The Senate gives disproportionate weight to small (often rural, whiter) states. The Electoral College means that key swing states get outsized attention. So even in moments of popular left-of-center shifts, the structural burdens multiply.

Why It Matters (Beyond Theory)

• These tactics erode the political agency of communities already under pressure—Black, Latino, Native, young, low-income.
• Policy outcomes shift: with fewer people able to show up, legal constraints tighten.
• The legitimacy of government erodes—people increasingly feel elections aren’t meaningful, which fuels apathy or radicalization.
• When one side can “hold power with fewer votes,” every election becomes an existential battle. Backlash, suppression, and escalation become the norm.

Why Some People Think “They Wanted This”

• When results align with expectations, it’s easy to believe they reflect genuine public will.
• The suppression is subtle: rarely is someone overtly told “you can’t vote” today. Many barriers are disguised as neutral rules (ID rules, signature matching, district lines).
• And the narrative is relentless. The “fraud” myth is repeated until constraints seem like reasonable precautions instead of targeted obstacles.

What We Can Do (without illusions)

The constraints are real—and tragic. But we still have levers of resistance. Here’s the roadmap:

Fight at the legal/structural level
• Push for a revived Voting Rights Act (or a John Lewis–type Act) that restores pre-clearance.
• Challenge gerrymanders and unfair rules in courts and state constitutions.
• Support litigation by civil rights orgs (ACLU, NAACP, Brennan Center) that serve as watchdogs.

Local organizing & election protection
• Train poll workers & watchers in marginalized areas.
• Ensure voters know their rights (ID rules, deadlines, provisional ballots).
• Use voter guides, hotlines, apps, and grassroots communication to counter misinformation.

Mobilize attention & accountability
• Document closures, irregularities, long lines, resource shortages—make them viral.
• Use media, investigative journalism, and civic tech to expose suppression.
• Pressure state lawmakers and secretaries of state to make access easier (e.g., extended hours, mobile polling, more drop boxes).

Build redundancy & fallback systems
• Encourage early voting and absentee ballots in states that allow.
• Advocate for automatic registration, same-day registration, and vote-by-mail everywhere.
• Support nonpartisan funding for election infrastructure (machines, staffing, training).

Cultural and narrative work
• Shift the story: emphasize that “fraud” is rarer than the obstacles.
• Elevate voices in suppressed communities to speak about their experiences.
• Use art, media, storytelling to reconnect people to the importance of every vote.

Closing: A Pessimist With Reasons to Fight

I don’t believe this is the democracy we’re told we live in. But I also don’t believe it’s fixed in place.

When someone says, “the people wanted this,” I hear deflection. They don’t want you asking how the electorate was shaped—constrained, filtered, hollowed out.

Don’t buy it. Every “win” comes with a backstory: of maps, rules, and gatekeeping.

If we want a government that’s responsive to all of us—not just those who can clear every hurdle—we have to fight for it. That means learning the terrain. That means raising our voices where it hurts. That means rewriting the rules, not just changing the players.

So the next time you vote, don’t just look at the ballot. Look at the path that got you there. Who cleared it? Who blocked it? Who designed the map?

Then start rewriting the map.

Share

This article is brought to you by:

The Labora Collective 🌱

Where innovation meets advocacy. Where your voice shapes the future of women’s health.

Who we are?

One place where Black feminism often diverges from mainstream white feminism is in its orientation toward reality as it is, not solely as we wish it to be. We operate in a society shaped by power imbalances, historical trauma, and gendered expectations — and those dynamics don’t vanish because we’d prefer them gone.

To pretend otherwise is to leave ourselves unprepared for the challenges that will, inevitably, meet us in the real world.

Black feminist thought has long resisted the temptation to confuse aspiration with infrastructure. From the Combahee River Collective to Audre Lorde to bell hooks, there is a throughline: transformation begins with confronting the structures that actually govern our lives. That means we do not shy away from the unromantic truths about how power moves through families, communities, and institutions.

One of those truths is that, for better or worse, much of men’s mental and emotional health work is done by women. We carry the unspoken responsibility of listening, absorbing, reframing, and soothing. This is not just a personal dynamic but a patterned one, passed down through generations, reinforced by culture and circumstance.

It is important to name both sides of that reality. This role can be exhausting, undervalued, and imposed without consent. But it is not inherently shameful or degrading. In its healthiest form — chosen freely, grounded in mutual respect, and supported by reciprocity — it can be a profound act of love and community care.

Our work, then, is not to deny that this labor exists or to pretend we can fully opt out of it tomorrow. It is to give women genuine freedom to decide whether they want to inhabit that role, and to ensure that when they do, it is under conditions that strengthen rather than deplete them.

That means having the tools, boundaries, and support systems that make such work sustainable. It also means ensuring men are equipped — and expected — to give care in return.

This is where I part ways with the idea that liberation can be pursued through constant antagonism with men.

We cannot thrive if our vision for freedom excludes the same people with whom we build families and sustain communities. The biological and social interdependence is real: until we can reproduce, raise children, and nurture entire societies entirely without men — and we cannot — our liberation must also account for coexistence, collaboration, and mutual care.

The challenge is not simply to “share the work” but to redefine the conditions under which it is done. To create relationships where care is not extracted from women as an unpaid tax, but exchanged as part of a living, breathing partnership. To build communities where emotional labor is not a gendered inheritance but a collective capacity.

Liberation in this context is not about erasing the role of emotional caregiver from women’s lives; it is about making it one of many roles we can step into and out of without penalty. It is about ensuring that when we give deeply, we are replenished — not left empty.

That is the kind of reality Black feminism prepares us to live in: one where we see the world clearly, negotiate its terms with agency, and build something better without losing sight of what is already here.

Subscribe now

Share

This article is brought to you by:

The Labora Collective 🌱

Where innovation meets advocacy. Where your voice shapes the future of women’s health.

Who we are?

Los Angeles, Summer 2025. Agents in masks pull up to car washes, Home Depots, day-labor corners, bus stops, even churches. They grab men on their way to work. They twist arms, shove people against fences, throw them in vans. Some of those people show U.S. passports or California IDs—and still get hauled off.

A federal judge blocked those raids on July 11, 2025. Last week, the Supreme Court quietly lifted that block on its “shadow docket.”¹ In a 6-3 decision issued without a majority opinion, the Court let those tactics resume while the case continues. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to say out loud what this really does: *agents may use race, Spanish language, job type, and location as part of their “reasonable suspicion.”*²

If you’re Hispanic in Los Angeles, that means fewer constitutional protections than your white neighbors—for simply existing in public space.

This post is for people who live with that reality: the drywall crews that keep this city standing, the women who clean our buildings overnight, the teens translating for abuela at the market. I’m going to break down what happened, what it means, and what you can do—today—to protect yourself and your people.

📋 What Just Happened—In Plain Language

The case: Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo challenges raids where ICE teams detained people for looking Latino, speaking Spanish, standing near day-labor sites, or working in certain jobs. A district judge barred those stops; the Ninth Circuit left the block in place.³

The Supreme Court order: On September 8, 2025, the Court stayed (paused) that block, letting the raids resume while the lawsuit proceeds. No majority opinion; it’s a shadow-docket order.⁴

Kavanaugh’s concurrence: He argued factors like “apparent race or ethnicity,” “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent,” location, and occupation can be “relevant” to suspicion in immigration stops—exactly the door civil-rights groups say the Constitution was meant to keep shut.⁵

Sotomayor’s dissent (joined by Kagan & Jackson): warns the ruling effectively permits agents to seize “anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and works a low-wage job,” violating core Fourth Amendment protections.⁶

Multiple nonpartisan and advocacy analyses describe the ruling bluntly: the Court greenlit racial profiling by allowing roving patrols to restart on the basis of appearance, language, workplace, and place.⁷

⚖️ Why This Isn’t “Just About Immigrants”

Two facts the Court’s order ignores:

1. Citizens are being stopped. Plaintiffs include U.S. citizens who were detained even after showing ID. That isn’t hypothetical—it’s in the record.⁸

2. Race-based suspicion punishes everyone who “looks like the profile.” In a city where nearly half of the residents are Latino, using ethnicity and Spanish as “clues” creates massive false positives—and a caste system where some people carry fewer rights on the sidewalk.

👩‍⚕️ The Women’s Health Emergency Nobody’s Talking About

When immigration raids target women, entire communities lose access to healthcare.

Maternal Health Crisis in Real Time

• Prenatal care abandonment: Women skip appointments when clinics sit near enforcement zones

• Birth complications surge: Untreated gestational diabetes and preeclampsia become deadly

• Domestic violence goes underground: Victims won’t call 911 if it means deportation

Research from Arizona’s SB 1070 showed a 27% drop in prenatal care usage among Latinas after implementation—even among citizens and legal residents.⁹

Women as Family Health Gatekeepers

Women make 80% of family healthcare decisions.¹⁰ When mothers fear detention:

• Children miss vaccinations

• Chronic conditions go untreated

• Mental health crises escalate

The Pregnancy Trap

Pregnant Latinas now face an impossible choice:

• Risk detention seeking prenatal care

• Risk death avoiding medical monitoring

This isn’t theoretical. ICE has arrested women leaving prenatal appointments, in hospital parking lots, even during labor.

🛡️ What You Can Do Right Now

Know Your Rights

• You have the right to remain silent (yes, even if undocumented)

• You don’t have to open your door unless agents have a warrant signed by a judge

• You can refuse consent to search your car, home, or belongings

• Record everything if you feel safe to do so

Family Safety Planning

1. Power of Attorney: Designate who cares for kids if you’re detained

2. Medical directives: Ensure someone can make healthcare decisions

3. Document storage: Keep copies of IDs, medical records, school documents with a trusted friend

4. Emergency contacts: Program immigration attorney numbers in all phones

Healthcare Access Strategies

• Find safety-net clinics: Federally Qualified Health Centers can’t share info with ICE

• Telehealth options: Many providers offer remote care

• Know emergency exceptions: Hospitals must provide emergency care regardless of status

📰 The Constitutional Crisis in Plain Sight

The Court’s reasoning would have been unconstitutional just two years ago. In Students for Fair Admissions (2023), this same Court declared the Equal Protection Clause’s “core purpose” was “doing away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.”¹¹

Now? If you’re Latino in Los Angeles, your race is legally “relevant” to whether agents can stop you.

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence tries to soften this by calling these “relevant factors” among others. But when those “factors” include how you look and sound, we have a name for that: racial profiling.

The irony cuts deep: The same conservative majority that struck down affirmative action for “discriminating” based on race now permits immigration agents to use race as grounds for detention.

💪 Community Power in Crisis

History teaches us that when courts fail, communities rise. During the 1950s’ “Operation Wetback,” Latino communities created underground networks for healthcare, education, and mutual aid. We’re building those again.

Resources That Actually Help

Legal Support:

• ACLU Southern California: https://www.aclusocal.org/en/cases/vasquez-perdomo-v-noem ¹²

• CHIRLA Emergency Hotline: (213) 353-1333

• National Immigration Law Center: www.nilc.org

Healthcare Access:

• California Primary Care Association clinic finder: www.cpca.org

• Planned Parenthood (reproductive health regardless of status): www.plannedparenthood.org

• Los Angeles County Department of Public Health: publichealth.lacounty.gov ¹³

Family Support:

• Family Preparedness Plan (English/Spanish): www.ilrc.org/family-preparedness-plan

• Know Your Rights cards: www.ilrc.org/red-cards

Para Recursos en Español

• Línea directa de CHIRLA: (213) 353-1333

• Unidos US recursos familiares: www.unidosus.org

• La Opinión guías legales: www.laopinion.com/temas/inmigracion

🔮 What Happens Next

The case returns to the Ninth Circuit, but raids continue. The administration seeks 3,000 daily arrests nationwide.¹⁴ Los Angeles remains ground zero.

Three scenarios ahead:

1. Ninth Circuit rules broadly: Could restore injunction with stronger reasoning

2. Supreme Court takes full case: Final ruling could cement or reverse racial profiling

3. Political pressure builds: Mass mobilization historically shifts enforcement priorities

✊ The Truth They Don’t Want You to Know

This ruling affects everyone who “looks” Latino—citizens, residents, visitors. It creates a two-tier system where your appearance determines your rights. That’s not immigration enforcement. That’s apartheid.

But here’s what power never understands: We’ve survived worse. Our abuelas faced Operation Wetback. Our parents navigated Proposition 187. Each generation thinks they’ll break us. Each generation learns—we don’t break.

We organize. We protect each other. We vote. And eventually, we win.

Subscribe now

Share

References

¹ Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo, No. 25A169 (U.S. Sept. 8, 2025) (order granting stay).

² Id. (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (listing “apparent race or ethnicity,” “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent,” location, and occupation as “relevant factor[s]”).

³ Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem, No. 25-cv-04852 (C.D. Cal. July 11, 2025) (granting preliminary injunction); Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem, No. 25-16543 (9th Cir. Aug. 15, 2025) (denying stay pending appeal).

⁴ Noem, No. 25A169 (shadow docket order without majority opinion).

⁵ Id. (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

⁶ Id. (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).

⁷ ACLU of Southern California, Supreme Court Greenlights Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement (Sept. 9, 2025); National Immigration Law Center, Analysis of Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo Stay Order (Sept. 10, 2025).

⁸ Vasquez-Perdomo, No. 25-cv-04852, Declaration of Maria Gonzalez (U.S. citizen detained for four hours despite presenting California driver’s license).

⁹ Toomey, R.B., et al., Impact of Arizona’s SB 1070 Immigration Law on Utilization of Health Care and Public Assistance Among Mexican-Origin Adolescent Mothers and Their Mother Figures, 104 Am. J. Public Health 28 (2014).

¹⁰ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Women as Health Care Decision-Makers, https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts-and-features/fact-sheets/women-healthcare-decision-makers/index.html

¹¹ Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181, 206 (2023).

¹² ACLU Southern California case tracking and resources.

¹³ Los Angeles County Department of Public Health community resources.

¹⁴ E. Findell et al., The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown, Wall St. J. (June 9, 2025).

The Labora Collective 🌱

Where innovation meets advocacy. Where your voice shapes the future of women’s health.

Who we are?

The Supreme Court made it legal for federal agents to stop Latinas based on how they look, sound, and where they work.

Last week’s ruling in Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo allows immigration officers across Los Angeles and six surrounding counties to use race, Spanish language, and job type as grounds for detention—creating a public health crisis that will devastate women and families for generations.1

This isn’t just about immigration status.

When law enforcement targets women based on appearance, it destroys the foundation of community health: trust in institutions, access to care, and family stability.

As someone who’s spent years documenting how policy failures kill women, I’m telling you what this means for your health and your family’s survival.

💔 Why This Hits Women Hardest

Healthcare becomes dangerous. Latinas already face the highest rates of undiagnosed diabetes, delayed cancer screenings, and untreated mental health conditions in the U.S.2 Now, seeking medical care means risking detention based on your accent at the clinic, your job cleaning buildings, or living near a bus stop where day laborers wait.

Prenatal care collapses. Pregnancy requires consistent medical monitoring. When women avoid hospitals due to enforcement fear, we see skyrocketing rates of pregnancy complications, preterm births, and maternal mortality. The communities targeted by these raids—largely working-class Latinas—already face maternal death rates 40% higher than white women.3

Domestic violence goes underground. Hispanic women experience intimate partner violence at rates significantly higher than the national average.4 Immigration raids make it impossible to report abuse or seek help. When your partner knows that calling 911 might bring ICE to your door, violence becomes a tool of control that endangers both mothers and children.

Children lose caregivers overnight. Women are the primary healthcare decision-makers in 80% of families.5 When mothers are detained, children miss vaccination appointments, medication refills, and chronic disease management. The trauma of family separation creates lifelong mental health consequences that pediatricians across Los Angeles are already documenting.

⚖️ What’s Legal Now (The Terrifying Reality)

Since September 8, federal agents can stop you if you:

• Look Hispanic or speak Spanish/accented English

• Work in landscaping, construction, housekeeping, or food service

• Are near Home Depot, day labor sites, car washes, or bus stops

• Live in working-class neighborhoods where immigrants “are known to gather”6

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “apparent race or ethnicity” and “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent” can be “relevant factor[s]” and that detained citizens can “promptly go free” after proving their status.7 The case record tells a different story: U.S. citizen Jorge Viramontes was questioned four times in nine days. Another citizen had his Real ID confiscated and never returned.8

For women, this means: You can be detained while taking your children to school, going to work as a house cleaner, or picking up groceries. Your citizenship won’t protect you if you “look wrong” to agents who are under pressure to meet daily arrest quotas of 3,000 nationwide.9

🛡️ Immediate Protection Steps for Women and Families

1. Medical Preparedness (Do This Week)

• Document your family’s medical history. Write down all medications, dosages, doctors’ names, and emergency contacts in both English and Spanish. Keep copies at home, work, and with a trusted friend.

• Update emergency contacts at your children’s schools and daycare. Authorize a backup person who can make medical decisions if you’re detained.

• Prepare medical releases allowing trusted family members to access your children’s healthcare and make urgent decisions.

• Know your rights at hospitals. Federal law requires emergency treatment regardless of status, but document any discrimination or refusal of care.

2. Safety Networks

• Create Signal/WhatsApp groups for your block, workplace, and church. Share real-time warnings about enforcement activity.

• Designate community watchers who can safely film encounters and contact legal help.

• Practice scenarios with your children about what to do if enforcement comes to school or home.

3. Legal Protection

• Carry ID but protect privacy. Have identification, but you’re not required to answer questions about immigration status without a warrant.

• Know key phrases: “I choose to remain silent. I want a lawyer. I do not consent to a search.”

• Emergency legal hotline: CHIRLA: (213) 353-1333 / ACLU SoCal: (213) 977-5200

4. Financial Safety

• Separate emergency funds. Keep cash accessible to trusted family members who can pay bail, medical bills, or transportation if you’re detained.

• Document income sources in case detention threatens job security or benefits.

📊 The Health Consequences We’re Already Seeing

Los Angeles pediatricians report children asking if “la migra will come to the doctor.” Emergency departments document women arriving in labor who delayed care for weeks. Mental health clinics see anxiety and depression spiking among Latina patients who now view seeking help as dangerous.

This isn’t hypothetical. When Arizona’s “Papers Please” law went into effect in 2010, prenatal care visits among Hispanic women dropped 30% in the first year. Infant mortality rates increased.10 The same pattern is beginning in Los Angeles, amplified by federal enforcement with explicit Supreme Court approval.

⚖️ Why Your Constitutional Rights Matter for Women’s Health

The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable seizure isn’t abstract legal theory—it’s the foundation that allows women to move through public space safely. When the government can detain you based on appearance, accessing healthcare becomes an act of resistance rather than a basic right.

The Equal Protection Clause’s “core purpose,” in the Supreme Court’s own words, is *”doing away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.”*11 Yet that same Court just approved the exact discrimination it claims to prohibit, creating a two-tiered system where some women’s bodies are subject to state control simply for existing in public.

💪 What We’re Building Next

This attack on women’s health and constitutional rights demands organized resistance. I’m working with partners across LA to create:

• Community health navigators who can safely connect women to medical care during enforcement periods

• Know-your-rights trainings specifically designed for women’s health scenarios

• Legal observer networks documenting violations and supporting affected families

• Healthcare provider resources to maintain access during the ongoing crisis

📣 Share This With Every Woman You Know

“La Corte Suprema permitió que los agentes paren a mujeres por parecer latinas, hablar español, o por el trabajo que hacen. Esto afecta tu salud, la salud de tus hijos, y tu seguridad. Necesitamos cuidarnos entre todas.”

This is how we keep our communities healthy: we share information, we look out for each other, and we refuse to let fear destroy the care networks that keep women and families alive.

Share

Subscribe now

🎂 Birthday Week Gift 🎂

Loved this article? I’m celebrating my birthday by giving YOU something special:

3 MONTHS FREE access to The Labora Collective 🎁

💜 Dr. Yamicia

Expires October 6.

Let’s build something revolutionary.

Claim Your Gift

REFERENCES:

This article is brought to you by:

The Labora Collective 🌱

Where innovation meets advocacy. Where your voice shapes the future of women’s health.

Who we are?

While America debates the appropriate response to political violence, a different kind of violence is being perpetrated against every family in this country: economic violence with a generational cost. Research shows it could rob your children of approximately $1 million over their lifetime.

Let me be clear about what we’re facing: systematic destruction of the innovation economy that has driven American prosperity since 1945, implemented through a combination of breathtaking incompetence and deliberate cronyism that favors large corporations while crushing small businesses and future entrepreneurs.

The Research That Should Terrify Every Parent

A recent study examining every populist leader over the past century found a consistent pattern: 15 years after the election of a populist, average income in affected countries was 10-15% lower than it would have been otherwise.

In a country like the United States, this translates to your children being $15,000 worse off every year because of this presidency. And they’ll carry that burden for the rest of their lives.

Do the math: if your children live long and healthy lives, they will be approximately $1 million poorer over their lifetime if Trump follows the historical pattern of populist economic destruction.

This isn’t about recession risk. Recessions end. This is about permanent structural damage to the economic foundations that generate prosperity.

The Destruction Is Already Happening

We don’t need to wait years to see the damage. It’s measurable right now:

Research Pipeline Collapse:

• NIH awards are down 29% compared to recent years

• NSF awards have dropped 50% in 2025

• Some universities report 10-25% funding declines, with one experiencing a 32% drop

• Graduate students are switching fields because funding has disappeared

• International researchers are fleeing to European and Asian opportunities

Why This Matters: Since 1945, advances in science and technology have driven 85% of American economic growth. Every dollar of NIH funding generates $2.46 in economic activity. Federal research returns range up to 210% according to Federal Reserve data.

When you systematically defund the research that creates tomorrow’s innovations, you’re stealing economic opportunities from future generations.

Innovation Brain Drain:

The same administration targeting research funding is simultaneously destroying the international talent pipeline that has made America the global innovation leader.

Take the ICE raid at the Hyundai battery plant in Georgia. Over 300 South Korean workers were deported - workers who were engaged in “technology transfer,” teaching American workers advanced battery manufacturing techniques that don’t exist domestically.

You cannot simply build a factory, put American workers next to Korean machines, and yell, “Make batteries.” The expertise is embedded in people, not blueprints. Those Korean workers represented decades of specialized knowledge that American workers needed to learn.

Korean media correctly identified this as racially motivated. Every multinational company in Asia now understands that their skilled workers risk being “frog-marched out in chains and put in cells” if they invest in American manufacturing.

Marco Rubio’s aggressive targeting of Chinese students compounds this damage. Students three years into PhD programs, having spent $300,000 on tuition, are having their visas revoked. The implicit promises that allowed them to plan five-year doctoral programs are being broken.

Who will trust American educational and research institutions after this?

Crony Capitalism: The Systematic Rigging of Markets

Trump operates what economists call a “client list model” - systematic favoritism that destroys economic opportunity for everyone outside the inner circle.

How It Works:

• Large incumbent firms get direct White House access for regulatory issues

• When Trump wants something, he calls Tim Cook at Apple or leadership at Intel

• Companies hold press conferences praising Trump and receive regulatory exceptions

• Meanwhile, small businesses face tariffs, regulatory red tape, and zero access to decision-makers

The Result: Stock markets rise because large incumbent firms benefit, even as the broader economy suffers structural damage.

Who Gets Destroyed: Future entrepreneurs working in garages. The next Apple, which was once born in a Silicon Valley garage by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, cannot emerge under this system.

Small businesses face tariffs, regulatory uncertainty, and bureaucratic obstacles without any recourse, while their large competitors get personal access to resolve problems with a phone call.

Policy Incompetence on a Staggering Scale

The economic damage isn’t just from bad policy - it’s from incompetent implementation that creates chaos and uncertainty.

The Tariff Disaster:

• April 2nd: Tariffs announced

• April 9th: Tariffs suspended

• Multiple cycles of on-again, off-again implementation

• Federal appeals court ruled the tariffs illegal

• Supreme Court review pending

• Ten years after the golden escalator, still uncertain whether the signature policy is constitutional

This isn’t left-wing versus right-wing economics. This is competent versus incompetent governance.

International Trade Chaos:

Changes to the de minimis rule were implemented so chaotically that Australia Post - the Australian equivalent of the US Postal Service - will not send a t-shirt from Australia to America. At least a dozen countries have stopped sending personal items to the US due to regulatory confusion.

eBay sellers are charging $2,000 shipping to dissuade purchases because the rules are too confusing to navigate.

The Federal Reserve Confirms Economic Damage

The Federal Reserve’s recent statement revealed a shift from “cautious optimism” to “cautious pessimism” - the most significant revision to their economic assessment in years.

They see unemployment rising, job growth falling, and inflation rising simultaneously. This combination - economic stagnation plus rising inflation - is called stagflation, and it represents the Fed’s acknowledgment that Trump’s own policies have weakened the economy.

The Fed’s quarter-point interest rate cut won’t fix structural damage this severe. As economist Justin Wolfers noted, a quarter percentage point never makes a difference in an economy as large as America’s.

Job growth over the last four months has been extraordinarily low. We’re “one bad thing away from being in a recession,” but the deeper concern is persistent structural damage that won’t show up in GDP figures but will compound over generations.

What You’ll Actually Experience

You won’t necessarily see a formal recession. What you’ll see instead:

• The pay raise you don’t get

• The exciting startup job that’s never born

• More time in meetings discussing “what does the leader want” instead of “what would be best for our customers”

• Reduced innovation in products and services

• Higher costs for goods due to trade chaos

• Fewer opportunities for career advancement as economic dynamism declines

These impacts accumulate over time, creating the $15,000 annual income reduction that research predicts.

The Systematic Nature of Economic Violence

This isn’t accidental policy drift. It’s a systematic destruction of economic structures that threatens:

Women Specifically:

• Women are the primary healthcare decision-makers for families, bearing increased costs from research cuts

• Women comprise the majority of healthcare workers losing jobs as hospitals close units and research programs are defunded

• Professional women are avoiding states with restrictive policies, losing career opportunities

• The same system forcing economic dependence through reproductive control is eliminating economic opportunities through research and innovation cuts

Future Generations Generally:

• STEM pipeline destruction as graduate programs lose funding

• International brain drain as skilled workers choose other countries

• Startup ecosystem collapse as regulatory favoritism advantages large incumbents

• Manufacturing revival made impossible by destroying foreign investment and expertise

Historical Precedent: This Always Ends the Same Way

The research on populist economic outcomes isn’t speculative. It’s based on examining every populist leader over the past century. The pattern is consistent: short-term political gains followed by long-term economic devastation.

Countries that elect populist leaders see their economies systematically damaged through:

• Erosion of institutional competence

• Favoritism replacing merit-based systems

• International isolation reducing trade and investment

• Brain drain as skilled workers and entrepreneurs leave

• Innovation decline as research and development suffer

America is not exceptional. We are following the exact playbook that has impoverished other nations.

What This Means for Your Family

When you put your children to bed tonight, understand that their economic futures are being systematically destroyed by policies implemented with staggering incompetence and designed to benefit a small circle of large corporations at everyone else’s expense.

The $1 million lifetime loss isn’t hyperbole. It’s the predictable outcome of economic policies that:

• Destroy the research pipeline creating future innovations

• Drive away international talent and investment

• Replace competitive markets with crony capitalism

• Prioritize political loyalty over economic competence

Graduate students switching fields because of funding cuts don’t return when funding is eventually restored years later. They’re lost to scientific careers permanently.

International collaborators who’ve had partnerships destroyed don’t easily restart relationships when political winds change. Trust, once broken, takes generations to rebuild.

The economic damage compounds daily, and much of it will prove irreversible.

The Bottom Line

While you’re being lectured about appropriate responses to political violence, your children’s economic futures are being stolen through systematic destruction of America’s innovation economy.

The research is clear: your children will be approximately $15,000 poorer every year for their entire lives, totaling roughly $1 million in lost lifetime income.

This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about competence versus incompetence, merit versus cronyism, and long-term prosperity versus short-term political theater.

The people demanding you perform perfect grief for political commentators are implementing policies that will impoverish your children for decades.

Think about that when you sleep tonight.

Subscribe now

🎂 Birthday Week Gift 🎂

Loved this article? I’m celebrating my birthday by giving YOU something special:

3 MONTHS FREE access to The Labora Collective 🎁

Claim Your Gift

Share this gift → That pregnant friend. That healthcare provider. That advocate. They need this too.

💜 Dr. Yamicia

Expires October 6. Let’s build something revolutionary.

I'm done with it. And you should be too.

💔 The Violence You Refuse to See

To all of you sitting in your studios and writing your think pieces: I know you feel scared. I see your fear. But I refuse to watch footage of Kirk's shooting because I see enough violence in my actual life.

"I see the violence women suffer under our broken medical system. The violence of always feeling like you're failing the people you've spent your life trying to help. The violence of understanding that problems are so vast and systemic that you can only do your small part and somehow sleep at night knowing it's not nearly enough."

(Photo: Shutterstock)

You are scared because you recognize yourself in Kirk—another person who shares opinions for a living, another political narrator. But do not let your personal fear be the thing that causes you to belittle and dehumanize other people. Because that's exactly what you're doing when you scold us for our reactions.

You are not the first group to be targeted. Reproductive health clinicians live with the constant threat of losing their livelihoods, getting killed, being ostracized. There's professional danger, legal danger, financial danger. Native women face murder rates ten times the national average on some reservations. Pregnant women are murdered at higher rates than they die from medical complications³. Black women face femicide rates four times higher than the national average⁴.

"People face mortal risk for their work, their identity, their mere existence every single day. That's part of living in this country. If you haven't understood that before, it's time you understand it now."

🎭 The Battered Wife Fallacy

What you're selling us is what I call the "battered wife fallacy"—the lie that if we just behave perfectly, if we just find the exact right way to respond, if we don't make the other side mad, if we capitulate and make ourselves smaller and smaller until we literally evaporate from the world, then and only then will we get to preserve this system that at best views us as subhuman and at worst wants to completely eliminate us.

And then you want us to be grateful for that advice.

"This is the same playbook they always use on minorities, on women, on anyone without institutional power: convince us that our survival depends on perfect behavior while our oppressors face no such constraints."

⚡ The Reality Check You Need

Let me disabuse you of some illusions:

Donald Trump is going to do what he's going to do. The only real question—and he's going to find ways to kill people and break laws because he's told us from the beginning—is how hard people are going to fight him to reach his goals.

He wants to kill Black people. That's been his dream, his life's goal. Hispanic people, add them to the list. Jewish people seem okay for now. Muslim people, probably not so much. And he wants to subjugate women. These are known things. Let's stop pretending this isn't his agenda.

"The only thing that's actually undecided is how much resistance he'll face."

So I don't understand how scolding people for genuine reactions—not out of lack of empathy, but out of a sense that life has consequences—helps anything. When I first heard about Kirk's death, I didn't feel happy. But I felt a reminder that actions have consequences. And I felt something else: not everyone who gets hurt is a good person.

💭 Where's Your Empathy for the Rest of Us?

When you see children, women, babies, poor people, immigrants, Black people, Hispanic people—when you always see us being the ones who get hurt, it starts to feel like the whole world is against you.

So let Charlie Kirk have the legacy he worked for. I'm not celebrating his death. I empathize with his children, because they didn't choose this. His wife made a choice to build a life with this man, and frankly, I don't understand how that coexists with being a good mother. She had agency. There's only so much empathy I have to go around.

Because where was this energy for everyone else?

"Do you know how many people have been shot since Kirk died? In 2024, there were 16,576 firearm deaths in the United States (excluding suicides)—that's 45 people every single day. Where are their vigils? Where's the empathy for their families, their kids, their spouses?"

Since Kirk's death three days ago, approximately 135 more people have died from gun violence¹. Many of those people never hurt anyone. But somehow, one political commentator's death gets wall-to-wall coverage while 135 other deaths barely register as statistics.

🌃 What Actually Keeps Me Up at Night

You want to know what makes me sick to my stomach? Let me tell you about the violence you refuse to see.

🪶 The Invisible Epidemic

Native American women being systematically hunted, sexually brutalized, and murdered for decades. More than four in five Native women—84.3%—have experienced violence in their lifetime⁵. On some reservations, Native women face murder rates more than ten times the national average⁶.

"In 2016 alone, 5,712 Native women and girls were reported missing. Only 116 of those cases made it into the federal missing persons database⁷."

When Native women's bodies are found, they are 135% more likely to remain unidentified than women of other races⁸.

Think about that. Native women disappear and die at rates so extreme they defy comprehension. But there are no think pieces about how we should respond to their deaths. No lectures about appropriate grief. No demands for empathy toward their killers.

🤰 The Pregnancy Death Trap

The fact that homicide is now the leading cause of death for pregnant women should keep you up at night.

Not high blood pressure. Not hemorrhage. Not infection. Murder.

The latest national data reveals that pregnant and postpartum women face a 3.62 per 100,000 live births homicide rate. There are 16% more likely to be murdered than non-pregnant women. For pregnant teenagers, that risk explodes to 6.67 times higher.

Let me put that in perspective: if you're a pregnant Black teenager in America, you are nearly seven times more likely to be murdered than if you weren't pregnant. Seven times.

"64.8% of these murders happen at home. The place women are supposed to be safest. 69.2% involve firearms—often the same guns that domestic violence advocates have been trying to get out of abusers' hands for decades."

📊 The Racial Reality

The numbers tell a story of systematic abandonment. Black pregnant women face a 12.47 per 100,000 births homicide rate compared to 2.12 for white women¹⁴. That's nearly a six-fold difference.

"When Black women get pregnant, their risk of being murdered jumps by 39% ¹⁵. Think about what that means. The very act of carrying life—something we're told is sacred—becomes a death sentence at rates that should shock us into action."

But instead of addressing this crisis, we got decades of politicians like Charlie Kirk telling women that motherhood was their highest calling while simultaneously supporting policies that made pregnant women sitting ducks for the men who would kill them.

📍 The Geographic Pattern of Abandonment

This violence isn't random. It's concentrated. States with restrictive abortion access have 75% higher rates of pregnancy-associated homicide¹⁶. The same states that claim to protect life are the ones where pregnant women are most likely to be murdered.

"When you strip women of reproductive autonomy, you don't protect life. You create more death. The data proves it."

🏥 The Healthcare System's Deadly Blindness

Here's what really gets me: homicide now exceeds all traditional maternal mortality causes by 2-fold, yet our entire maternal health system pretends violence doesn't exist.

For decades, we tracked maternal deaths from hemorrhage, infection, and high blood pressure while ignoring the fact that pregnant women were being shot and beaten to death at epidemic rates. We didn't count those deaths as "maternal mortality" because they weren't medical complications.

"But pregnancy isn't a medical condition that exists in a vacuum. When a woman gets pregnant, she doesn't just face medical risks—she faces social, economic, and relationship pressures that can turn deadly."

The man who seemed supportive when she wasn't pregnant might become violent when she is. The family that accepted her choices might suddenly demand control over her body. The community that claimed to value motherhood might abandon her when she needs support most.

We finally have the first complete national data on this crisis, covering 2018-2019. Before that, we were working with partial data, regional studies, and estimates. Meaning for decades, we systematically undercounted and under-responded to the leading cause of death for pregnant women.

"How many women died because we refused to see the pattern? How many could have been saved if we'd integrated violence prevention into prenatal care from the beginning?"

🔗 The Charlie Kirk Connection

This brings us back to Charlie Kirk and why his death doesn't deserve our tears.

Kirk spent his career promoting policies and attitudes that directly contributed to this crisis. He advocated for abortion bans that trap women with violent partners. He promoted "traditional family values" that prioritize male control over women's safety. He dismissed domestic violence as a feminist myth while supporting unrestricted gun access for the very men killing pregnant women.

"Every statistic I've shared—the 3.62 homicide rate, the 6-fold racial disparity, the 75% increase in restrictive states—represents the deadly consequences of the worldview Kirk championed and amplified."

So when people say "I can't believe someone could be killed just for their political speech," I want them to understand: Kirk's "political speech" killed women. It created the conditions that made homicide the leading cause of death for pregnant women. It normalized the violence that's claiming lives at rates we're only now beginning to document.

"His words weren't abstractions. They were policy blueprints that became laws that became death sentences."

✊ Your Responsibility

Everyone's actual responsibility right now is making sure people understand what we're actually facing. Not the sanitized version where "political speech" exists in a clean debate-space, but the version where pregnant teenagers are 6.67 times more likely to be murdered and firearms are present in 69.2% of pregnancy-associated homicides.

If you want to channel your energy about Kirk's death into something useful, start here: Check on every pregnant woman in your life and make sure they're safe. The statistics show that intimate partner violence increases during pregnancy for 1 in 6 women¹⁹, and the presence of a gun increases the risk of homicide by 500% ²⁰.

Ask the hard questions: Is her partner controlling? Has he become more possessive since the pregnancy? Does he have access to weapons? Does she have somewhere safe to go?

"Because right now, while you're writing think pieces about Charlie Kirk's legacy, pregnant women are being murdered primarily at home by intimate partners with firearms. That's what will make a difference when Trump decides to escalate his war on women's autonomy—having communities that recognize the warning signs and act."

Being constantly scolded by people who helped create this mess doesn't accomplish any of that.

The supremacy you're communicating is staggering. You're demanding that we—the people Kirk spent his career targeting for elimination—perform empathy for our oppressor while 45 Americans die from gun violence every day, and you say nothing. While Native women are murdered at rates ten times the national average and you stay silent. While pregnant women are more likely to be murdered than to die from medical complications and you write no think pieces.

"But one wealthy white man who built his career on cruelty gets killed, and suddenly you're the arbiters of appropriate grief."

What in God's name is wrong with you?

🎯 The Bottom Line

You are so disconnected from actual human suffering that you've made a political commentator's death more important than the daily violence faced by the people he spent his career targeting.

I've had to unsubscribe from people I once respected because this response has shown me just how far removed they are from the reality the rest of us live in.

"Your fear is valid. Your platform is not more important than our lives."

Stop scolding us. Start listening.

Leave a comment

Share

Share In Her Name: Exposing the Cost of Control

📚 References

1. The Trace. "Gun Violence by the Numbers in 2024." December 31, 2024.

2. National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR)." 2025.

3. Azad, Hooman A., et al. "Homicide and suicide: The leading cause of maternal death and how firearm legislation affects it." Presented at: The Pregnancy Meeting; Jan. 27- Feb. 1, 2025.

4. Trends in Pregnancy-Associated Homicide, United States, 2020. American Journal of Public Health. 2022;112(9):1333–1336.

5. Rosay, Andre B. "Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: 2010 Findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey." National Institute of Justice, 2016.

6. A Modern Trail of Tears: The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Crisis in the US. Forensic Science International: Reports, 2021.

7. Bureau of Indian Affairs. "Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Crisis." 2025.

8. Anguelov, Nikolay, et al. "Understanding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis: An Analysis of the NamUs Database." Criminal Justice Policy Review, March 2023.

9. Homicide During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period in the United States, 2018–2019. PMC, National Center for Biotechnology Information.

10. Homicide During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period in the United States, 2018–2019. PMC, National Center for Biotechnology Information.

11. Keegan, Grace, et al. "State-Level Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence, Abortion Access, and Peripartum Homicide." Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2024.

12. Trends in Pregnancy-Associated Homicide, United States, 2020. American Journal of Public Health. 2022;112(9):1333–1336.

13. Trends in Pregnancy-Associated Homicide, United States, 2020. American Journal of Public Health. 2022;112(9):1333–1336.

14. Trends in Pregnancy-Associated Homicide, United States, 2020. American Journal of Public Health. 2022;112(9):1333–1336.

15. Trends in Pregnancy-Associated Homicide, United States, 2020. American Journal of Public Health. 2022;112(9):1333–1336.

16. Keegan, Grace, et al. "State-Level Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence, Abortion Access, and Peripartum Homicide." Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2024.

17. Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. "New National Study Finds Homicide and Suicide is the #1 Cause of Maternal Death in the U.S." 2025.

18. Homicide During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period in the United States, 2018–2019. PMC, National Center for Biotechnology Information.

19. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "Intimate Partner Violence." Committee Opinion, 2012.

20. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Homicide leading cause of death for pregnant women in U.S." October 21, 2022.

Let me explain.

Politics Is Not a Desk Job

If an accountant were murdered and we said, "I can't believe someone could be killed for just doing taxes," that would make sense. A CPA is not wading into existential questions of power. But politics is not accounting. It is not neutral. It is not detached.

Politics decides who eats and who starves. Who lives and who dies. Who is protected and who is left exposed. Political speech is not "just words"—it is the blueprint for laws, policies, and cultural currents that rearrange the very conditions of life.

If you're in politics—whether as a policymaker or a commentator—you are not just "sharing ideas." You are wielding a weapon. That weapon has consequences.

The American Delusion of Safety

The shock at Kirk's murder exposes a uniquely American delusion: that politics here is somehow different, cleaner, safer. We imagine politics as debate-club sparring rather than what it has always been: the contest for power, survival, and resources.

But history says otherwise. Abroad, political speech is understood as life-and-death. Dissidents in Russia, feminists in Latin America, activists in sub-Saharan Africa—all know that words put you in danger because they matter. They destabilize, they challenge, they cost.

Meanwhile, American politicians and commentators have convinced themselves they can unleash cruelty with no responsibility attached.

They call for stripping healthcare, banning abortion, or demonizing immigrants, and then act surprised when anger and violence follow.

Violence Is Not Abstract

To understand why this matters, let's be clear about what violence looks like in our own country right now:

• Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the U.S. That's more than 10 million people every year.

• The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.

• Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime in America.

• More than half of women murdered in the U.S. are killed by a current or former intimate partner.

These are not distant statistics. They are the everyday fallout of a political culture that tolerates hate, undermines protections, and erodes rights.

Charlie Kirk's Words Were Never Neutral

So when we talk about Charlie Kirk, we cannot treat his death as if he were an innocent caught in crossfire. His career was built on sowing cruelty, contempt, and division. He is not disconnected from the harm. His rhetoric—amplified daily to millions—helped fuel policies and attitudes that stripped people of healthcare, safety, and dignity.

The War on Women's Autonomy

Kirk's most vicious work was his systematic assault on women's reproductive autonomy and bodily self-determination. These were not abstract philosophical positions—they were blueprints for laws that have already killed women and will kill more.

When asked about a hypothetical 10-year-old rape victim, Kirk said without hesitation: "The answer is, yes, the baby would be delivered." He doubled down: "It is a growing consensus in the pro-life world that abortion is never medically necessary."

Let that sink in. Kirk advocated for forcing a 10-year-old rape victim to carry her rapist's child to term. In his world, the trauma of sexual assault should be compounded by the state-mandated destruction of that child's body and future. He called this "something good in the face of evil, instead of saying we're going to do evil."

This is not philosophy. This is policy. Kirk's position is now law in multiple states, where children who have been raped are denied abortion care. The direct line from Kirk's words to state violence against children is not theoretical—it is documented, measurable, and lethal.

The Assault on Women's Freedom

Kirk's hostility toward women extended far beyond reproductive rights into a comprehensive attack on women's autonomy, economic independence, and political participation.

At Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit, Kirk told thousands of young women to "trade their feminism for femininity, ditch their professional aspirations and focus on finding a husband to fund being a stay-at-home mom." He warned them: "If you're not married by the age of 30, you only have a 50 percent chance of getting married. And if you don't have kids by the age of 30, then you have a 50 percent chance of having kids."

This messaging was calculated manipulation designed to terrorize young women into submission. Kirk weaponized women's fears about aging and fertility to push them away from education, careers, and independence. He explicitly told them that "everything they do on a daily basis should then point towards that goal" of marriage and motherhood.

Kirk regularly featured guests who went further. On his show, Terry Schilling declared: "Every goal of the feminist movement — ever since they got, you know, the right to vote — after that, it all went downhill." Kirk provided the platform for rhetoric that explicitly called women's suffrage a mistake.

The Broader Pattern of Dehumanization

Kirk's rhetoric about women was part of a broader project of dehumanization. He described young women who voted for Kamala Harris as wanting "careerism, consumerism and loneliness," while Trump-voting men wanted "family, children and legacy."

He regularly dismissed women's experiences of violence and trauma. When discussing domestic abuse, workplace harassment, or sexual assault, Kirk's response was consistently to minimize, deflect, or blame victims. He described women as "the most depressed group in the history of the species" and "the most miserable they've ever been," attributing this to women's liberation rather than the systematic oppression his movement championed.

The Body Count

How many deaths can be traced back to policies Kirk defended or narratives he mainstreamed?

We may never know the number. But it is not small.

Every woman who has died from pregnancy complications in states with abortion bans. Every teenager who has been forced to carry her rapist's child. Every woman who has stayed with an abusive partner because Kirk's movement eliminated her economic alternatives.

Kirk spent over a decade building the intellectual and cultural infrastructure for a war on women's bodies and minds. His words became laws. His laws became death sentences.

Reconnecting Politics and Consequence

If there is one takeaway from this moment, it is this: politics must be reconnected to responsibility. Political actors—whether elected, appointed, or self-anointed—do not get to disown the damage their words create.

What does that mean for us?

Stop saying "it's just speech." Speech is the precondition for law, for power, for violence. When Kirk said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry her attacker's child, he wasn't engaging in abstract debate—he was advocating for state violence against children.

Name the harm clearly. If a law leaves people uninsured, undocumented, unsafe, or dead, that is not "debate"—that is political killing by another name. When we pretend otherwise, we become accomplices to the violence.

Demand accountability. Politicians and commentators alike must be judged not just by their intentions but by their impacts. Kirk built a media empire by promising his audience that cruelty was consequence-free. His death proves that promise was a lie.

The Lesson of This Death

The lesson is not that political speech "shouldn't be dangerous." The lesson is that political speech is dangerous because politics itself is dangerous. The sooner we stop pretending otherwise, the sooner we can reclaim politics as a serious and moral endeavor—one that safeguards lives rather than destroying them.

Charlie Kirk spent his career promoting laws and attitudes that terrorized, injured, and killed women. He described this work as defending "traditional values" and "protecting families." But there is nothing traditional about forcing children to give birth. There is nothing family-friendly about stripping women of economic independence. There is nothing valuable about a culture that celebrates cruelty.

Kirk's death is not an aberration. It is a reminder. The stakes of politics have always been this high. We forgot. And forgetting has cost us dearly.

The women who died because of the policies Charlie Kirk championed will never get justice.

But maybe—just maybe—his death will remind us that politics is not a game. Maybe it will teach us to take words seriously again. Maybe it will force us to reckon with the violence we have allowed to masquerade as "values."

That would be a legacy worth having.

What we’re watching unfold isn’t trade policy—it’s political performance art. And like most of Trump’s stunts, it’s loud, reckless, and designed to hurt the very people it claims to protect.

This new wave of tariffs? It’s not about jobs. It’s not about China. It’s not about “winning.”

It’s about control—of the narrative, of the headlines, and ultimately, of the people who will bear the brunt of its consequences: working-class Americans.

💰 Tariffs Are Taxes—And We’re the Ones Paying

Trump wants to call this “economic liberation.”

But let’s be clear: this is a tax on everyday life.

When he slaps a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, it doesn’t hit billionaires.

It hits the single mom buying school supplies.

It hits the retired couple trying to afford their meds.

It hits families already drowning in inflation who now get to pay even more for everything from groceries to car repairs.

And the kicker? He’s pitching it as patriotism.

As if struggling to afford baby formula is a small price to pay for “America First.”

Let’s not confuse branding with strategy. This isn’t a plan—it’s a performance.

🏭 Manufacturing a Myth: The Lie of the Revived Factory

Trump keeps promising a return to the golden age of American manufacturing.

But the truth?

These tariffs aren’t bringing back factories—they’re bankrupting small businesses that rely on imports.

They’re squeezing farmers whose equipment just got way more expensive.

They’re wrecking supply chains that never fully recovered from the pandemic.

And while CEOs scramble to figure out what they can afford to keep producing, Trump’s base is fed soundbites.

Not solutions. Not support. Just slogans.

🎭 The Spectacle Is the Strategy

This has never been about helping the economy.

It’s about feeding a narrative: that Trump is the only one “fighting for America,” and everyone else is the enemy.

It’s the same story, over and over:

Manufacture a crisis, declare yourself the savior, then blame the fallout on immigrants, Democrats, China—anyone but the man in the mirror.

Meanwhile, he’s turning trade policy into a cultural wedge issue.

If you’re against tariffs, you’re “anti-American.”

If you question the logic, you’re “soft.”

It’s not just economic malpractice—it’s psychological warfare.

He wants people to feel punished and proud at the same time.

That’s the game.

And too many are falling for it.

📉 We Deserve More Than Slogans

What this country needs isn’t more posturing—it’s protection.

From predatory markets.

From inflation that hits poor families hardest.

From leaders who gamble with livelihoods to boost their polling numbers.

We need an economic strategy rooted in reality, not revenge.

We need to stop mistaking noise for leadership.

Because Trump’s tariffs aren’t about building anything—They’re about breaking faith.

Breaking trust.

Breaking the fragile economic threads that too many Americans are barely hanging onto.

⚠️ The Warning Is Loud. Is Anyone Listening?

If we let this stand—this version of politics where cruelty is rebranded as strength—we’re not just losing money.

We’re losing the plot.

We’re watching a man throw grenades into the economy so he can stand in the smoke and pose like a hero.

But this isn’t a movie. There’s no post-credits scene where everything magically gets fixed.

There’s just us—struggling to afford groceries, wondering why our jobs just got harder, and trying to make sense of a system that keeps handing us the bill for someone else’s ego.

This isn’t leadership. It’s vandalism.
And the longer we call it anything else, the more damage it does.

In my other life, I’m a writer of epic romances—the kind of fiction that lives in the space between heartbreak and hope, where characters navigate the exquisite agony of almost having everything they want. I write under a pen name, keeping that part of myself carefully separate from my professional identity.

But one thing our organization has become increasingly interested in is the power of storytelling for medical and public health education. How narrative can reach people in ways that statistics and policy papers cannot. How fiction techniques—character development, emotional arc, visceral detail—can make abstract concepts feel immediate and personal.

This piece was inspired by that intersection. I wrote it today while caring for my sick son, sitting in his darkened room at 3 AM, struck by the profound difference between my worry and the terror that mothers before vaccines must have felt.

What follows is an attempt to use storytelling to bridge that gap—to help us feel, not just understand, what vaccines have given us.

My son is sick.

The thermometer reads 101.3°F, its digital display glowing in the dim light of his bedroom. His small body radiates heat against the sheets, cheeks flushed that deep red that only comes with real fever. When I press my palm to his forehead, the heat transfers instantly to my skin—that particular burning that makes your stomach drop because you know this isn’t just tired or cranky. This is his body fighting something real.

His breathing comes fast and shallow, punctuated by soft whimpers that make my chest tighten with that specific breed of helplessness only mothers understand. The kind that makes you want to bargain with the universe, trade places, absorb his discomfort into your own body if it would give him relief.

Being a mother changes everything about time.

I’d always been someone who measured life in productivity—tasks completed, deadlines met, efficiency optimized. But sitting in this rocking chair at 3 AM, watching my son’s chest rise and fall, I understand what other parents meant when they talked about time stopping. Nothing exists beyond this moment. Not the work emails accumulating in my inbox, not the laundry piling up downstairs, not the normal rhythm of adult life that feels impossibly distant right now.

Just him. Just this fever. Just the weight of being the person responsible for monitoring every breath, every degree of temperature change, every sign that might indicate whether this is getting better or worse.

When your child is sick, the world contracts.

Everything narrows to the dimensions of a single room, to the most basic measurements of human survival. How much liquid has he consumed in the last four hours? When was his last wet diaper? Is he breathing easier than he was twenty minutes ago, or is that wishful thinking?

I’ve developed the hypervigilance of a trauma nurse—noting the exact texture of his cough, the precise color of his cheeks, the way his eyes focus or don’t focus when he briefly wakes. I set alarms for medicine times with the precision of someone managing life support equipment. The bottle of children’s Tylenol sits on his nightstand like a talisman, measured and remeasured to ensure exact dosing.

This is what loving someone more than your own life looks like at 3 AM: complete absorption in their wellbeing, your entire nervous system calibrated to their discomfort.

The humidifier runs its white noise lullaby. Juice boxes stand ready like tiny soldiers. The thermometer lives in my hand, warm from constant use. And somewhere underneath the immediate concern, underneath the maternal instinct to monitor and measure and worry, sits a deeper awareness—one that I almost don’t want to acknowledge because it feels like tempting fate.

This fever, as scary as it feels in this dark room, is probably just a virus. A few rough nights, some missed work, the particular exhaustion that comes from broken sleep and constant vigilance. But not death. Not permanent damage. Not the loss that haunted mothers for millennia.

Because of this awareness, I’m grateful for vaccines.

Not abstract gratitude—the kind you express at dinner tables or in holiday prayers—but the bone-deep appreciation of someone who understands exactly what they’ve been spared.

If I were a mother in Boston in 1890, this same fever could have been a death sentence.

The disease they called the “strangling angel of children” would start exactly like this—fever climbing steadily, a child’s body burning hot against cooling cloths. But within days, I’d notice the subtle changes that meant something deadlier was taking hold. The sore throat that progressed beyond normal discomfort. The way his voice changed, became muffled, as if he were speaking through cotton.

Then would come the membrane—thick and gray, growing across his throat like wet concrete poured into a narrow passage. I’d watch it develop with the horrible fascination of someone witnessing their own child’s potential suffocation. Day by day, breath by breath, it would narrow the space through which air could pass until breathing became a conscious struggle instead of an automatic function.

His breathing would change from fast and shallow to labored and desperate—that specific sound called stridor that every mother learned to recognize and fear. A high-pitched wheeze that meant air was fighting to get through a closing passage. His neck would swell grotesquely. His skin would take on the blue-gray pallor of oxygen starvation.

There would be no antibiotics, no antitoxin, no emergency room to rush to. Just home remedies passed down through generations of grieving mothers: steam from boiling water, desperate attempts to help him cough up pieces of the deadly membrane, increasingly frantic prayers as his breathing became more distressed.

The disease moved through neighborhoods like wildfire. I might lose him on Monday, watch it claim his sister on Wednesday, cradle his baby brother as the infection took hold on Friday. Entire families would fall within a single week, leaving behind empty houses and the particular silence that comes after children’s voices are suddenly absent.

Diphtheria didn’t negotiate or show mercy. It simply spread from child to child through shared cups, bedtime kisses, the ordinary intimacy of family life, until whole communities learned to brace for the sound of church bells marking another small funeral.

If I were a mother in Mississippi in 1946, summer would bring terror instead of swimming and baseball games.

My son would spend a perfect July afternoon at the local pond—diving and splashing with friends, his body strong and coordinated, muscles working exactly as they should. He’d come home sunburned and exhausted, complaining of nothing more serious than a mild headache that I’d attribute to too much sun and excitement.

But within twenty-four hours, that innocent headache would escalate into something unmistakable. Fever climbing past 102. Neck and back pain so severe he couldn’t sit up or bend forward. The stiffness that meant the virus had found its target: his spinal cord.

By the third day, I’d realize his legs weren’t responding to his brain’s commands. The polio virus would be systematically destroying the motor neurons that controlled movement, cutting communication lines between his mind and his muscles with surgical precision.

The ambulance would arrive to take us to the hospital, where children lay trapped in iron lungs—massive metal cylinders that looked more like medieval torture devices than medical equipment. My strong, athletic son would be sealed inside one of these machines, only his head visible through a small porthole, completely dependent on artificial breathing when his own respiratory muscles failed.

I’d sit vigil for months in that institutional room, listening to the rhythmic whoosh of the mechanical breathing apparatus, watching my child’s bright, intelligent eyes—still completely him—looking back at me from inside a steel prison. Through the curved mirror positioned above his face, I could see his expressions: frustration, fear, the terrible awareness that his body had betrayed him in the most fundamental way.

Some children would eventually graduate to smaller portable devices, or leg braces and crutches that allowed a semblance of normal movement. Others would spend their shortened lives completely dependent on machines to keep them alive, their dreams of running and playing reduced to memories of a single afternoon at a swimming hole.

If I were a mother in London in 1962, pregnancy would become a nine-month gauntlet of terror.

German measles seemed so harmless when it struck children—just a low fever and delicate pink rash that spread like watercolor across their skin. Swollen lymph nodes tender to touch. Nothing that a few days of rest wouldn’t resolve completely.

But if that same innocent virus found me during pregnancy, it would cross through my placenta like an invisible saboteur, attacking my developing baby’s most vulnerable systems during those crucial first weeks when I might not even realize I was expecting.

I’d sit in the doctor’s office at twenty weeks pregnant, trying to process medical terminology that felt like a foreign language: “congenital rubella syndrome,” “cardiac malformations,” “sensorineural hearing loss,” “congenital cataracts.” The ultrasound would reveal the devastating reality—my baby’s heart had developed with holes that might never close properly. Cataracts clouded tiny eyes that might never see my face clearly. The delicate structures of inner ears had been destroyed, meaning my child might never hear music, laughter, or my voice saying “I love you.”

Maternity wards filled with mothers like me—women who had spent months dreaming of perfect babies, only to deliver infants whose futures had been stolen by a virus that seemed so inconsequential when it swept through elementary schools. We’d hold these fragile newborns, counting their labored breaths, knowing that every day would bring new challenges, new limitations, new grief for the children they might have been.

The guilt was almost worse than the sorrow. Had I somehow failed to protect my baby? Should I have avoided crowds, stayed home more, taken precautions that no one had told me were necessary? In a world without routine vaccination, every mild illness during pregnancy carried the potential for catastrophe.

And everywhere in the world before 1963, measles waited like an inevitable predator.

Nearly every child would encounter it eventually—the most contagious virus known to medical science, spreading through the air with such efficiency that sharing space with an infected person virtually guaranteed transmission.

It would start innocuously enough: runny nose, persistent cough, fever that climbed steadily higher despite every cooling method I could employ. Then came Koplik’s spots—tiny white dots with blue centers appearing inside the mouth like sinister confetti, harbingers of what was to come.

Within days, the characteristic rash would bloom across his face and spread downward—angry red welts that made his skin look as if it were on fire from the inside out. The fever would spike above 104 degrees. Light would become unbearable, forcing him to hide in darkened rooms. Coughing fits would leave him gasping and exhausted.

But I’d know that even “mild” cases could turn deadly without warning. The virus could attack his brain, causing encephalitis that led to seizures, coma, and permanent intellectual disability. It could trigger pneumonia that filled young lungs with fluid, making every breath a struggle. It could damage his eyes, steal his hearing, weaken his heart in ways that would affect him for whatever life he had remaining.

In the worst years, measles killed over 100,000 children annually in the United States alone. Globally, the death toll reached into the millions. Mothers learned to expect loss as an integral part of parenthood, developing the particular resilience that comes from understanding that love and grief are often inseparable.

I would have sisters, friends, neighbors who buried children. We’d attend funeral after funeral—small white coffins becoming a horrible constant in our communities. Some families would lose multiple children in a single outbreak, the virus moving through households with methodical efficiency, taking the youngest and most vulnerable first, then returning for those whose immune systems couldn’t mount adequate defense.

Back then, every fever was a question mark with potentially devastating answers.

It meant vinegar-soaked cloths laid on burning skin while mothers prayed for temperatures to break. Ice baths for children whose fevers soared above 104 degrees, their small bodies convulsing with chills even as they burned from within. The metallic taste of fear that became a permanent resident in the back of your throat during illness seasons.

Mothers became amateur diagnosticians by necessity, learning to distinguish between the early stages of diphtheria and croup, between measles and scarlet fever, between the first signs of polio and a simple summer cold. We developed the hypervigilance of battlefield medics, noting subtle changes in breathing patterns, skin color, neurological responses that might indicate which disease had invaded our homes.

It was spooning liquid into reluctant mouths, counting each swallow as a small victory against dehydration. It was the sound of labored breathing echoing through thin walls at 3 AM. It was checking on sleeping children multiple times each night, placing gentle hands on small chests to confirm they were still rising and falling with life.

Most of all, it was the silence of empty chairs at dinner tables. High chairs that would never be occupied again. School desks that remained permanently vacant. Playgrounds where certain children’s laughter would never ring out again.

Every mother knew families where there had once been five children and now there were three. Where the family portrait hanging in the front hallway showed faces that existed only in memory. Where bedrooms remained exactly as they’d been left, slowly gathering dust like shrines to interrupted childhoods.

Grief was woven into the fabric of motherhood like a dark thread that appeared in every pattern. Women supported each other through loss with the weary expertise of those who had walked similar paths. We knew how to prepare small bodies for burial, how to comfort mothers whose arms would never hold their children again, how to explain to surviving siblings why their brother or sister wouldn’t be coming home from the hospital.

That’s what vaccines changed—not just medicine, but the entire experience of raising children.

They transformed motherhood from a constant vigil against death into something approaching normal worry. They gave us the extraordinary gift of mundane concerns—the luxury of fretting about hydration and sleep schedules instead of whether our children would survive the night.

Vaccines turned potential death sentences into inconveniences. They transformed diseases that once filled children’s hospitals and morgues into historical footnotes that most modern parents have never heard of. They made it possible for me to sit in this rocking chair with nothing more serious to worry about than when to administer the next dose of Tylenol and whether I should call the pediatrician in the morning.

The mothers who came before us lived in a different world entirely. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers navigated childhood as if it were a war zone, where every season brought new threats, where love was measured not just in lullabies and bedtime stories but in the desperate vigilance required to keep death from claiming their babies.

They would have traded years of their own lives for what I have tonight: the simple assurance that this feverish child in my arms will recover completely within a week, leaving no permanent damage, no lasting disability, no empty space at our family table.

They would have given anything for the privilege of ordinary parental worry.

So tonight, as I sit in this blue-lit room, thermometer warm in my hand from constant use, watching my son’s chest rise and fall with the steady rhythm of someone fighting nothing more dangerous than a common virus, I hold space for a profound truth.

This fever isn’t the terror it once was. His labored breathing isn’t the death rattle that haunted mothers for centuries. His flushed cheeks aren’t the scarlet brand of scarlet fever. His restless sleep isn’t the precursor to the eternal sleep that claimed so many children before him.

This is the miracle that desperate mothers prayed for with breaking hearts—vaccines that turned childhood killers into minor illnesses. Every shot administered in pediatrician’s offices, every brief moment of tears when the needle goes in, every updated immunization record represents victory over the historical inevitability of loss.

My son shifts in his sleep, and I adjust his blanket with the automatic tenderness of someone who gets to assume recovery. Tomorrow morning, his fever will likely be lower. By the end of the week, he’ll be back to his usual energy, running and playing and taking for granted the simple miracle of his healthy body.

He’ll never know how close his great-great-grandmother’s children came to dying from diseases he’ll never face. He’ll never understand that his ordinary childhood—unmarked by iron lungs or memorial services or the particular grief that comes from losing children—represents the answer to generations of mothers’ most desperate prayers.

And that’s exactly as it should be.

That’s the gift vaccines gave us: the gift of routine recovery, of children who grow up to have children of their own, of futures that stretch out unbroken before our babies. The gift of quiet rooms where there used to be death rattles. Of full dinner tables where there used to be empty chairs. Of mothers who get to worry about normal things instead of mourning dead children.

In this moment, holding vigil over my sick son, I’m living every previous mother’s answered prayer. I’m the recipient of their greatest wish: that someday, somehow, a fever would be just a fever, and children would live to see morning.

This fever is just a fever. And my child will live to see morning.

That simple truth—so ordinary to me, so miraculous to the mothers who came before—is worth more than anything I’ve ever possessed.

At Diosa Ara, although primarily a women’s health startup, we often reflect on corporations’ roles in nurturing a healthy society. When investors dismiss our 30% profit margins as “uninvestible,” it raises a perplexing question:

What do we even consider a business anymore? 💭

This has numerous implications, but here’s the most pressing one: our approach isn’t just creating income inequality. It’s turning our most effective problem-solving tool—business—into something disinterested in real challenges and reasonable growth.

The result? We get 1,000 new startups working on AI-generated PowerPoint presentations instead of 1,000 new startups tackling renewable energy. 🌍💡

The Path Forward

So, what’s next?

The only sustainable way forward involves creating companies that strike a balance between profit and purpose. While financial health is undeniably essential for any organization’s survival, focusing solely on incremental gains rather than crafting solutions for real-world problems pours petrol onto the fire that threatens to consume our society. 🔥

That’s where social entrepreneurship becomes pivotal. Benefit corporations stand out as they possess legal protections that prioritize serving people over profit. On the flip side, non-profits are critically vulnerable because of their reliance on government funding.

This approach may thrive under FDR-esque policies, but it falters under leaders whose rhetoric is divorced from actual policy impacts—think of Trump’s moves to freeze trillions in federal funding, affecting health clinics, research, and essential services, despite court orders to counteract these measures. 🛑⚖️

With the political right likely to decimate our existing system, the rest of us must begin envisioning the foundation upon which we rebuild.

What kind of system do we desire, and how do we ensure it fulfills our needs?

In today’s world, where American government policy can sometimes seem more preoccupied with crypto than cancer research, supporting social entrepreneurship is more than just good business—it’s essential infrastructure for the society we aspire to live in. 🏗️🌱

To truly combat inequality, we need companies vested in solving real problems. Here are the ways we can approach this monumental task:

• Understanding Root Causes: Recognize the historical, economic, and social factors contributing to ongoing disparities. 📜

• Creating Inclusive Benchmarks: By identifying indicators of inequality such as income disparity and access to essential services, businesses can focus on areas that need the most attention.

• Strategic Management Practices: Implement strategies like corporate social responsibility and equitable business practices to directly target inequality.

• Tailored Approaches for Different Groups: Different demographics face unique challenges. Solutions must be bespoke to be effective. 🎯

• Future-oriented Business Models: Focus on sustainable business practices that engender long-term societal equity.

Ultimately, companies that prioritize addressing inequality can drive transformative social change and enhance community outcomes. By implementing equitable practices and fostering innovative business models, they not only bolster brand loyalty and consumer trust but also seed the groundwork for outperforming traditional profit-driven companies.

Our goal is clear — unravel the inequality trap by establishing companies that don’t just exist to generate wealth but serve as genuine agents of change.

In doing so, we approach a future where business works for everyone, creating solutions that ensure prosperity for all.

Let’s create the infrastructure for that society, recognizing its value as the very blueprint of tomorrow’s better world. 🌍✨

She died because her pain was ignored—twice.

Because she was dismissed—twice.

Because even after she was declared brain dead, the state treated her body as a vessel, not a person.

And her family? They were told they had no say.

Because she was pregnant.

This didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because of decisions—by providers, by a hospital ethics board, by lawmakers who built a system that protects the fetus more than the mother.

This was structured, layered, and entirely preventable.

We owe her more than remembrance.

We owe her reckoning.

🖤 She Was a Mother, a Nurse, a Daughter

Adriana Smith was 30 years old.

She was early in her pregnancy.

And she knew something was wrong.

She walked into two different hospitals in Atlanta in early February 2025 with a sudden, severe headache.

She asked for help. She explained her pain. She advocated for herself.

She was discharged. Twice.

No imaging.

No escalation.

No answers.

Her family said she spoke up. She knew the system. She was a nurse. And yet—it didn’t matter.

Even as her pain persisted. Even as she returned.

By the time she collapsed the next day, it was too late.

A CT scan revealed multiple brain clots.

She was declared brain dead within hours.

⚕️ 1. A Missed Diagnosis That Became a Death Sentence

Severe headache is one of the most well-documented warning signs of neurologic complications in pregnancy:

• Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST)

• Stroke

• Preeclampsia with neurologic features

These are not rare. Especially in Black women. Especially in early pregnancy.

Adriana’s symptoms demanded neuroimaging.

But no CT or MRI was ordered at either hospital.

She was sent home with pain meds. Told to rest.

Her family later said she “gasped for air in her sleep” the next morning.

She did everything right.

The system failed her anyway.

“She should’ve been listened to first. That’s why we say: trust Black women.” — SisterSong

⚖️ 2. A Law That Silenced Her, Even After Death

Once Adriana was declared brain dead, the standard protocol would have been:

• Discontinue life support

• Allow the body to rest

• Let her family grieve

Instead, her family was told that Georgia’s LIFE Act—the state’s 6-week abortion ban—required her body to be maintained to support the fetus.

Adriana was dead.

But because her fetus was 8–9 weeks along, the hospital claimed she must be kept alive.

Her mother, April Newkirk, said:

“We had no say. They told us it wasn’t our decision anymore.”

This is what post-Roe America looks like.

A dead woman, kept on life support, because the law defines a 9-week fetus as a person—and her, as a vessel.

🧠 3. The Ethical Cost of Forced Gestation

Maintaining somatic support on a brain-dead body for 4 months—starting at 9 weeks gestation—is nearly unheard of.

Yet this is what Emory Hospital chose.

Doctors hoped to get the fetus to 32 weeks. They made it to 25.

During that time:

• Adriana’s body underwent forced hormonal support

• Infection risk, circulatory instability, and multi-organ strain built up

• The fetus developed in an environment with no maternal consciousness, likely reduced perfusion, and unknown neurologic impact

And the family bore the cost. Emotionally. Financially. Spiritually.

They launched a GoFundMe to raise $275,000 for Baby Chance’s care.

Because the state that forced this process offered nothing in return.

“It was torture,” her mother said.

“We wanted the baby—but the decision should’ve been ours. Not the state’s.”

👶🏽 4. A Baby Born into Uncertainty

On June 13, 2025, Adriana’s body underwent an emergency C-section.

Her baby, Chance, was delivered at 25 weeks—weighing just 1 lb 13 oz.

This is what that means:

• A micro-preemie born at the edge of viability

• Underdeveloped lungs

• Fragile vessels in the brain susceptible to bleeding

• High risk of long-term neurological complications

Chance was intubated. He received surfactant to help his lungs stay open.

He was placed in an incubator and surrounded by wires, monitors, and IV lines.

Before birth, ultrasounds had already shown fluid on the brain—a red flag for neurological damage.

His grandmother said:

“He may be blind. May not be able to walk. May not survive once he’s born. But we’re going to love him just the same.”

That love is unwavering. But love should not be the only support this child receives.

Because the system that fought so hard to keep him gestating has disappeared now that he’s here.

And no one—neither state nor hospital—has taken responsibility for the burden they placed on this family.

🧭 What We Owe Her—Clinically, Legally, and Systemically

This wasn’t just a medical error.

This was a coordinated, systemic failure that stretched across institutions and ideologies.

Here’s what justice looks like—not as a slogan, but as policy, practice, and prevention.

🩺 Clinically:

• Flag return visits during pregnancy as automatic escalation points

• Require neuroimaging for persistent headache when initial treatment fails

• Listen to patient discomfort as diagnostic data—not a nuisance

⚖️ Legally:

• End pregnancy exclusions in advance directives

• Mandate hospital transparency about consent restrictions during pregnancy

• Codify: Brain death is death. No exceptions based on gestational age

🏥 Institutionally:

• Create internal ethics protocols that center pregnant patients’ prior wishes

• Stop weaponizing legal ambiguity against grieving families

• Publicly report when laws or policies are used to override next-of-kin decisions

🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏽 Structurally:

• Fund platforms like Diosa Ara that empower patients to advocate in real time

• Provide legal and clinical navigation teams for families facing forced gestation

• Train doulas, nurses, and birth workers in emergency advocacy escalation

🔥 We Need More Than Outrage. We Need Action.

Adriana Smith didn’t die from an unpredictable condition.

She died from predictable neglect—at the hands of a medical system that didn’t listen and a legal system that didn’t protect her.

And even in death, she was denied rest.

If we do nothing, this will happen again.

To someone else’s daughter. Someone else’s partner. Someone else’s sister.

“Not clear who we are making decisions for anymore.”

That’s what one ethicist said about Adriana’s case.

That’s not just a legal failure. It’s a moral one.

✅ What You Can Do Right Now

If you’re pregnant—or planning to be:

• 📋 Complete an Advance Care Directive with explicit pregnancy language

• 🩺 Don’t leave the ER if your pain persists. Ask: “What are you ruling out?”

• 💬 Say to your family: “If I’m ever brain dead and pregnant—I do not want to be kept on life support.”

If you’re a provider, doula, or advocate:

• 🧾 Learn your state’s pregnancy laws—and what they allow or prohibit

• 📱 Use tech tools that support maternal symptom triage and escalation

• 📢 Share Adriana’s story. Don’t let the silence win

If you’re a voter:

• 🗳️ Support reproductive justice candidates and legislation

• ✊🏾 Fight for laws that protect living women, not just embryos

🧠 Adriana’s Legacy Is a Mandate

This series wasn’t written to sensationalize Adriana’s death.

It was written because what happened to her was avoidable.

Because Black women are not protected by medical credentials.

Because “doing everything right” still doesn’t guarantee safety.

Because autonomy is still conditional—and often suspended—at the moment of pregnancy.

Because Adriana Smith deserved more.

And it is on us—all of us—to ensure she didn’t die in vain.

We Say Her Name Because It Should Have Been Enough

Adriana Smith.

Not just a case.

Not just a controversy.

A woman.

A nurse.

A mother.

A daughter.

A voice.

Silenced by neglect.

Used by the state.

Now amplified—by all of us.

• She recognized a serious symptom.

• She sought emergency care.

• She came back when it didn’t get better.

And still—she was sent home. Twice.

No imaging. No escalation. No diagnosis.

By the time anyone took her seriously, she was brain dead.

This post is not about blame. It’s about prevention.

And the uncomfortable truth is: Adriana’s death was not inevitable.

There were moments—clear, visible, preventable moments—when someone could have acted.

And someone didn’t.

🩺 Point of Intervention #1: The First Headache Should Have Triggered Alarm

A severe, new headache in early pregnancy is a red flag. It should prompt:

• Blood pressure checks

• Urinalysis for protein

• Neurologic exam

• At minimum, consideration of imaging

What might have helped:

✅ A clinical decision support tool that flagged “severe headache in pregnancy” as high-risk

✅ A digital triage system that prioritized neuro workup

✅ An OB or ER protocol that automatically escalated persistent neurologic complaints

Bottom line: If she’d had a CT scan at the first hospital, her brain clots might have been caught—and treated—before her collapse.

🏥 Point of Intervention #2: The Second Visit Should Have Changed the Plan

Returning to the ER for the same unresolved symptom is a clinical siren.

This should have prompted:

• Review of her prior discharge

• Full reassessment

• Imaging, at minimum

• Admission, if diagnosis remained unclear

What might have helped:

✅ A case manager or patient advocate trained to escalate unresolved neurologic symptoms

✅ Built-in EMR alert for “repeat visit within 24 hours for same complaint”

✅ In-hospital policy that flags pregnancy + return visit = required second opinion

Bottom line: Her return visit was not a fresh complaint—it was a failure signal. It should have been treated like one.

🧠 Point of Intervention #3: A Simple Question Could Have Changed the Outcome

“Do you feel safe going home?”

Had anyone asked Adriana that—and really listened—the answer may have stopped her discharge.

What might have helped:

✅ Structured discharge checklist that includes this question

✅ Provider training to pause when a patient hesitates or expresses uncertainty

✅ A built-in delay for high-risk pregnancy discharges—requiring attending sign-off

Bottom line: Clinical judgment doesn’t just live in lab values. It lives in discomfort. And Adriana was trying to tell someone she wasn’t okay.

⚖️ Point of Intervention #4: The Legal Trap Could Have Been Avoided

After brain death, Adriana’s family was told they had no say because of Georgia’s “heartbeat” law.

But in May 2025, the Attorney General clarified: Georgia law did not require the hospital to continue life support.

The hospital chose the most conservative legal interpretation.

What might have helped:

✅ Legal support for families navigating fetal personhood laws

✅ Advance directives with pregnancy-specific language

✅ Advocacy organizations involved early, before hospital ethics boards took over

Bottom line: A clearly written ACD—and early legal support—might have strengthened her family’s position or prevented prolonged somatic support.

Cases like Adriana Smith’s have shaped Diosa Ara’s clinical care model by making one thing painfully clear: in obstetrics, the window between “something feels off” and catastrophic outcome is often razor-thin—and systemically biased.
At Diosa Ara, we intervene at the point of care most proximal to a potential crisis. That might look like offering educational reassurance, flagging red-flag symptoms, making direct clinical requests on the patient’s behalf, coordinating a transfer, or even initiating legal action when someone becomes incapacitated.
We don’t wait for a diagnosis or a textbook checklist—we respond to risk in real time. Because obstetrics moves fast, and any intervention that only works upstream or downstream—while leaving hospital-based racism untouched—will fail. The data bears that out. That’s why we’re building a model that centers advocacy, escalation, and protection at the precise moment when the system is most likely to ignore or abandon you.

✅ What You Can Do Right Now

If you’re pregnant (or could become pregnant):

• 📋 Draft an Advance Care Directive that includes pregnancy-specific language

• 🧠 Know the red flags: Severe headache, vision changes, swelling, shortness of breath

• 📞 Seek a second opinion if you’re discharged and don’t feel better

• 💬 Before leaving any ER: “Do you know what’s causing this? Are you sure it’s not serious?”

If you’re a birth worker, doula, or provider:

• 🏥 Train patients to recognize return visits as serious escalation

• 💡 Advocate for discharge protocols that center patient safety and comfort

• 📚 Educate clients on their legal rights in your state—including how pregnancy impacts consent and end-of-life care

In a Better System, Adriana Would Still Be Alive

This wasn’t an unavoidable tragedy. It was a cascade of delays, dismissals, and legal overreach.

It was a headache ignored.

A second visit unheeded.

A death prolonged by law.

A baby born into uncertainty.

It didn’t have to be this way.

And it doesn’t have to happen again.

Next: What We Owe Adriana Smith

In our final post, we ask:

Now that we know what happened—what must change?

We’ll explore how hospitals, lawmakers, and communities must respond.

Because Adriana Smith didn’t just deserve care.

She deserved respect.

And even in death, she deserves to be heard.

But here’s the thing: You don’t have to do everything. You just need to pick one thing and go all in.

Trump and his movement are attacking every aspect of justice and democracy. That means there are endless ways to get involved—but waiting around for someone else to stop them isn’t an option. This fight is already here, and we need everyone.

1️⃣ Pick Your Fight

The first step is deciding what you care most about. You will be most effective if you focus on an issue that speaks to you personally. Here are just a few of the biggest fights happening right now:

✔ Reproductive Justice – Abortion bans, restrictions on contraception, criminalizing pregnancy outcomes. Groups to support: The Brigid Alliance, If/When/How, National Network of Abortion Funds.

✔ LGBTQ+ & Trans Rights – Healthcare bans, criminalization, book bans. Support Trans Lifeline, Lambda Legal, The Trevor Project.

✔ Immigrant & Refugee Protection – Mass deportation plans, stripping asylum rights. Get involved with RAICES, The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Al Otro Lado.

✔ Palestinian Solidarity & Free Speech Defense – People being arrested for simply speaking out. Groups like Palestine Legal and The Center for Constitutional Rights need support.

✔ Environmental Justice – The destruction of climate protections and Indigenous land rights. Organizations like Sunrise Movement, Earthjustice, Indigenous-led land defense groups need help.

✔ Voting Rights & Democracy Protection – Voter suppression and dismantling free elections. Support Fair Fight, The Brennan Center for Justice, The NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

✔ Poverty & Economic Justice – Our country has abandoned its poorest people. Support Mutual Aid Networks, The Poor People’s Campaign, local food banks.

✔ Education & Curriculum Fights – The right is erasing history and banning books. Fight back by supporting educators, racial justice organizations, and banned book movements.

Not sure where to start? Pick one issue, research local organizations, and plug in.

2️⃣ Decide How You Want to Help

You don’t have to be an activist in the streets to make a difference. Every movement needs people in different roles:

💰 Donate – This is one of the most powerful things you can do. Activist groups and social justice organizations run on shoestring budgets and often lose money just to stay afloat. If you have the means, donate.

⏳ Volunteer Your Time – Whether you have two hours a week or ten hours a month, there is a role for you. Help answer calls, translate documents, knock on doors, or provide legal support.

📢 Use Your Voice – If you have a platform, use it. Sharing critical information, organizing local meetups, or making calls to lawmakers all contribute to resistance.

📝 Educate & Inform – Help people understand their rights, how the system works, and what’s at stake. Schools are under attack, and knowledge is power.

👩🏽‍💻 Tech, Design, or Admin Support – Many grassroots movements desperately need website support, graphic design, IT help, or social media management. If you have these skills, offer them.

⚖️ Legal & Policy Work – If you have expertise in law or policy, consider working pro bono, filing lawsuits, or helping with legal defense.

3️⃣ Support or Join Existing Organizations

You don’t have to start from scratch. There are already people doing the work—find them, support them, and help make their work easier.

At , we are in the social entrepreneurship space, working to improve maternal mortality outcomes, particularly for Black women and women of color.

Too often, social justice movements rely solely on philanthropy or government funding, which is unstable. Black women deserve the best healthcare available—period. Not just the best care Medicaid will pay for, not just the best care within budget constraints. The best care, full stop.

If you want to help with our work, we are always looking for smart, committed people. We are a small team taking on a massive challenge, and we need help—from funding, to research, to advocacy, to organizing. But we are just one example of the thousands of organizations doing critical work.

4️⃣ Understand That This Is Not Optional

Before Trump, people used to say, Well, activism is great, but I have work, I have kids, I don’t have time.

Let me be blunt: That is no longer an excuse.

Pushing back against Trump’s authoritarianism is not secondary to caring for your family—it is caring for your family.

We are not talking about a normal political shift. We are talking about:

🚨 A national abortion ban

🚨 Mass deportations

🚨 The criminalization of LGBTQ+ people

🚨 The erosion of voting rights

🚨 The potential suspension of elections

If you are not involved in this fight, you are accepting these things as inevitable.

And they are not inevitable. But they will happen if people don’t start treating this with the urgency it deserves.

I know life is hard. I know people are exhausted. I am not here to judge anyone. But I am here to be realistic. If you want to take care of your family’s future, you must make time for this.

5️⃣ Act Now. Because We Don’t Have Time.

If you are waiting for someone else to stop this—stop waiting. If you are watching everything unfold and wondering when the breaking point will come, it already has.

They will not stop on their own.

But together, we can stop them.

📩 DM me if you want to get involved. We will do our best to point you in the right direction—whether that’s with us or another organization that fits your passion.

📢 Drop a comment with the cause you’re focusing on. Share this so more people know how to plug in. And DM me if you need help getting started.

We need everyone. Right now. Period.

She had been declared legally brain-dead on February 10, 2025 under Georgia Code § 31-9-2, which requires continuation of life support until at least 32 weeks’ gestation.

Her son, Chance, was born at just 25 weeks, weighing 1 lb 13 oz, and was immediately taken to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

And only then—once the state’s gestational mandate was fulfilled—was Adriana finally allowed to rest.

⚖️ A Body Maintained, A Baby Delivered

This is the uncomfortable truth:

Adriana’s life support continued not for her own benefit, but because Georgia law prioritized her pregnancy above her end-of-life wishes.

Declared brain-dead at 8–9 weeks’ gestation, hospital teams maintained ventilators, vasopressors, hormone replacement, and antibiotics—not to treat Adriana, but to carry her fetus toward 32 weeks.

Her mother, April Newkirk, stayed by her side through every round of monitoring and medication.

The plan was to maintain life support until at least 32 weeks—

but her body didn’t make it that far.

At 25 weeks, routine fetal monitoring flagged acute distress—

and the hospital acted.

Baby Chance was delivered via emergency C-section,

weighing 1 lb 13 oz,

then immediately rushed to the NICU.

The machines were turned off.

And Adriana was declared dead for the second time.

👶🏽 What It Means to Be Born at 25 Weeks

To the public, “a baby was born” sounds like a victory.

But for clinicians and families, 25 weeks marks the start of an agonizing journey of survival.

A 25-week infant is called a micro-preemie:

• Weighs under 2 lbs (Baby Chance was 1 lb 13 oz)

• Lungs lack mature surfactant, making breathing nearly impossible without support

• Digestive tract immature, requiring IV nutrition (TPN) and feeding tubes

• Skin is so fragile it can tear during routine care

• Immune system underdeveloped, driving high infection risk

Within minutes of birth, Baby Chance required:

• Intubation and mechanical ventilation

• Surfactant therapy to prevent lung collapse

• Central IV access for fluids, nutrition, and medications

• Heat support in an incubator to maintain body temperature

• Continuous monitoring of vital signs, blood gases, and labs

Even with expert NICU care, the average stay for a 25-weeker is 90–120 days—stretching well past the original due date.

👶🏽 Survival & Risks: What 25-Week Outcomes Really Look Like

Nationally, about 65–70% of infants born at 25 weeks survive to NICU discharge, though outcomes vary by center and individual risk factors.

Among those survivors:

• Chronic lung disease (bronchopulmonary dysplasia) affects ~50%, often requiring prolonged respiratory support

• Severe intraventricular hemorrhage (grade III–IV brain bleeds) occurs in ~20%, increasing the risk of cerebral palsy and cognitive impairment

• Retinopathy of prematurity impacts ~10%, risking vision loss without timely treatment

• Neurodevelopmental impairments (motor or cognitive delays, cerebral palsy) emerge in 30–40% by early childhood

Each additional week in utero significantly improves odds:

• Survival at 26 weeks rises to ~75–80%

• Rates of severe brain bleeds and chronic lung disease decline by 5–10% for each week gained

Even those who survive face lifelong challenges:

• Chronic health issues (asthma, hearing loss, neurodevelopmental disorders)

• Repeated hospitalizations and emergency visits

• Intensive therapies (PT/OT/Speech) and special education needs

• Emotional toll on families from ongoing uncertainty and care demands

💡 A Caution, Not a Success Story

Prior to birth, ultrasounds detected fluid on Baby Chance’s brain (ventriculomegaly)—a finding seen in roughly 1–2 per 1,000 births, and even more common in extreme preemies—that can herald bleeding or structural anomalies. This is not a minor hiccup; it carries serious downstream risks:

• Seizures

• Cognitive impairment

• Need for surgical shunts (up to 60% of preemies with ventriculomegaly require one within the first year)

• Lifelong disability (30–40% face significant neurodevelopmental delays)

Doctors have been publicly cautious.

Even Adriana’s mother, April Newkirk, acknowledged:

“He may be blind. May not be able to walk. May not survive once he’s born. But we’re going to love him just the same.”

That’s not resignation. That’s realism.

And it reflects the truth many families of micro-preemies face: survival doesn’t always mean full recovery. Follow-up MRIs and developmental assessments will determine whether Chance needs shunts, ongoing physical and occupational therapy, or other interventions—any of which adds emotional stress and medical complexity.

🏥 Breaking Down the Bill: The Real Cost of a Micro-Preemie

A single day in the NICU for a ventilated 25-weeker can run $3,000–$5,000, thanks to specialized nursing, respiratory therapy, and high-cost medications. Typical cost breakdowns include:

• Ventilator support & respiratory therapy: $1,000–$1,500 per day

• Surfactant & other specialty drugs: $500–$800 per dose

• Advanced imaging & labs: $300–$500 per set of labs; $1,000+ per ultrasound or scan

• Nutrition (TPN/IV fluids): $400–$600 per day

With an average NICU stay of 90–100 days for a 25-week infant, families often face bills in the $270,000–$500,000 range—before physician fees, ancillary services, or post-discharge therapies. If long-term disabilities arise, additional lifetime costs may include:

• Shunt placement & neurosurgical follow-up: $50,000–$100,000

• Early intervention therapies (PT/OT/Speech): $20,000–$30,000 per year

• Special education & support services: $15,000–$25,000 per year

💸 Who Pays? Accountability & Funding

The Smith family’s GoFundMe seeks $275,000 to cover NICU and post-discharge needs—yet Georgia law forced this medical journey.

No government agency has stepped forward to share costs or provide dedicated neonatal support.

A more equitable model might include:

• State-sponsored neonatal care funds (as in the U.K.) to underwrite NICU expenses for policy-mandated gestations

• Medicaid waivers covering extended NICU stays and early intervention services

• Mandatory hospital charity-care thresholds tied to law-driven cases

Without policy reform, families like Chance’s shoulder nearly all financial risk—even when state law compels treatment.

Aside: The Medicaid Gap

Under the American Rescue Plan, states could extend postpartum Medicaid from 60 days to 12 months—49 states did so to reduce maternal and neonatal complications. However, recent federal cuts to Medicaid’s FMAP and tighter eligibility rules threaten to roll back that extension to just 60 days. For a micro-preemie like Chance—whose NICU stay can last 90–100 days at $3,000–$5,000 per day—this cliff means coverage lapses mid-treatment, leaving families on the hook for six-figure medical bills.

Aside: Private Insurance Isn’t a Panacea

Even with “comprehensive” employer-sponsored plans, high deductibles and 20–30% coinsurance mean parents often face $20,000–$50,000 out-of-pocket. Annual out-of-pocket maximums rarely exceed $10,000, but NICU bills can exceed $300,000—so families hit both deductible and coinsurance limits before the plan’s cap is met.

🧠 Ethical Questions Few Want to Ask

Maintaining a brain-dead patient for 16 weeks is unprecedented.

Medical literature documents only ~30 cases of brain-dead gestation—and none beyond 6 weeks.

This raises urgent questions:

‼️ What happens when a fetus grows in a body that cannot regulate blood pressure, hormones, or temperature?

‼️ How do repeated antibiotic and hormone cycles affect placental function and fetal organ maturation?

‼️ Was Baby Chance effectively part of a non-consensual medical experiment, conducted without IRB oversight or formal consent protocols?

‼️ If fetal injury or long-term disability occurs, who bears legal and ethical responsibility—the hospital, the state that mandated support, or oversight bodies?

Adriana’s family launched a GoFundMe for $275,000—but no agency has accepted liability for this outcome.

❤️ The Toll on Families: Emotional & Psychosocial Impact

Parents of micro-preemies endure extreme emotional strain:

• Over 25% develop PTSD or clinical anxiety during and after NICU hospitalization.

• Nearly 30% experience postpartum depression—double the rate in full-term parents.

• Fathers face similar stress levels and are at increased risk for substance misuse.

• Physical separation—limited kangaroo care in early weeks—hinders bonding and intensifies anxiety.

Each day in the NICU becomes a roller coaster of hope and fear:

• Parents track every ounce gain, count alarms, and live in constant vigilance.

• Work, finances, and sibling routines get disrupted.

• Long-term mental-health support is critical but often under-resourced.

⚖️ Georgia’s Brain-Death Gestation Law: How We Got Here

Under Georgia Code §31-9-2, once brain death is declared, life support must continue until fetal viability (commonly 24–32 weeks) or until a court orders otherwise.

Unlike most states—where advance directives or multidisciplinary ethics reviews guide end-of-life care—Georgia’s statute offers no exceptions for patient wishes.

Only three states nationwide have explicit brain-death gestation laws; others rely on hospital policy or case-by-case ethics committees.

Current legislation (SB 123) would:

• Require courts to honor documented advance directives in pregnancy.

• Limit somatic support to cases with explicit family consent.

• Introduce judicial oversight only for ambiguous situations.

Without these reforms, pregnant patients lose autonomy—and families bear the emotional, physical, and financial fallout alone.

📚 Lessons from Other Brain-Dead Gestations

These cases show how timing and duration shape outcomes.

🌍 Florida (2018)

22 weeks → 33 weeks on support (11 wk)

• 6 months in NICU

• Mild chronic lung disease at discharge

• At 2 years: normal developmental milestones

🌍 Texas (2016)

18 weeks → 28 weeks on support (10 wk)

• Recurrent infections required multiple antibiotic courses

• Infant survived to discharge with severe cerebral palsy

• Ongoing physical and speech therapy

🔑 Key Pattern

• Longer support at later gestational ages yields better neurologic and pulmonary outcomes.

• Shorter support or earlier start risks infection, hemorrhage, and permanent disability.

🧬 Science in a Stalled Body: Fetal Development on Life Support

Forced gestation in a brain-dead body is physiologically uncharted.

• Hormone Imbalance

– Exogenous replacement vs. natural placental signals

– Possible effects on fetal thyroid and adrenal maturation

• Hemodynamic Instability

– Fluctuating vasopressors alter placental perfusion

– Risk of intermittent hypoxia

• Infection Risk

– Daily antibiotics vs. emerging resistant organisms

– Chorioamnionitis rates unknown

• Unknown Epigenetics

– No data on long-term gene expression changes

– Potential lifelong metabolic or neurodevelopmental impact

Aside: A High-Risk Medical ExperimentBrain-death somatic support in pregnancy has no formal protocols or IRB oversight.• ~30 documented cases total; most ≤ 6 wk support• Adriana’s 16-week support far exceeds precedent• No informed-consent frameworks for the fetus as research subject• Urgent need for ethical guidelines and legal accountability

❤️ What Baby Chance Deserves

Baby Chance didn’t ask for this.

He didn’t choose to be born this way, at this time, under these conditions.

And while the headlines have moved on, his family hasn’t.

They’re in a NICU right now. Watching machines. Hoping for ounces gained. Praying for normal scans.

They’re living the consequences of a decision they didn’t get to make.

“He’s here now,” Newkirk said.

“We’re going to love him just the same.”

That love is unconditional.

But the system’s obligation is not just to care, but to act protect, to respect, and to do no harm.

✅ What This Means for Patients and Providers

🧾 For Patients & Families

Know Your Rights—And Their Limits

It is wise and courageous to put your wishes in writing, especially regarding pregnancy and critical illness. However, please note:

Some states have laws that limit or override a pregnant person’s advance directives—particularly if the fetus is considered potentially viable. In those states, your stated wishes may not be legally enforceable if you are pregnant.

Despite these barriers, documenting your preferences is still essential:

• It communicates your values to your loved ones and health-care team.

• It helps your health-care proxy advocate on your behalf.

• It can support requests for transfer to a different hospital or state, should that become necessary.

• It is a form of advocacy—helping to expose and challenge unjust policies.

We recommend:

• Completing a standard state-approved advance directive or living will.

• Attaching this pregnancy-specific addendum.

• Discussing your wishes with your health-care proxy, OB team, and family.

• Consulting a legal professional about your state’s laws.

🔗 Pregnancy-Specific Advance Directive (Addendum)

🏥 For Providers & Hospitals

Adopt and train on a NICU–OB Brain-Death Protocol Checklist. Audit compliance and review outcomes regularly.

Even where state law constrains patient wishes, honoring their documented values is a professional, ethical, and human responsibility.

NICU–OB Brain-Death Protocol Checklist

1. Confirm brain death per AAN guidelines; document date and time.

2. Verify gestational age and establish viability threshold (e.g., 24 weeks).

3. Review the patient’s pregnancy-specific advance directive and proxy instructions; seek ethics and legal consultation if state law may override patient preferences.

4. Convene OB, NICU, ethics, legal, social work, and family for a multidisciplinary huddle (ideally within 24 hours).

5. Decide on a target gestational age for delivery (e.g., 32 weeks) based on fetal growth and family wishes, within the limits of law and safety.

6. Initiate somatic support as appropriate: hormone replacement, antibiotics, vasopressors, nutrition.

7. Establish a fetal monitoring schedule: ultrasound, non-stress tests, labs.

8. Define and document clear triggers for emergency C-section (e.g., decelerations, maternal instability).

9. Prepare the NICU team for immediate newborn resuscitation and transfer.

10. Withdraw maternal support per advance directive and legal allowances once the fetus is delivered.

11. Debrief with all teams and document lessons learned for quality improvement.

Without these tools, patient autonomy is further eroded, and families bear the emotional, physical, and financial burdens alone.

Important Note on Limitations

⚠️ State Laws May Restrict Your Rights

Some states invalidate or override advance directives during pregnancy, requiring that life-sustaining treatment continue if the fetus is potentially viable. This means your wishes, or your proxy’s instructions, might not be honored—even if you have completed this directive—depending on where you live and receive care.

• Always check your state’s law.

• Discuss these issues openly with your care team and loved ones.

• Consider advocacy for policy change if this matters to you.

Next: What Could Have Changed This

In our next post, we’ll examine the critical decision points where intervention could have—and should have—happened:

• Early triage: Recognizing red flags in Adriana’s initial headache and collapse could have triggered immediate neuroimaging.

• Advanced imaging: Rapid CT or MRI might have diagnosed her hemorrhage or clot days earlier, shifting care from conservative management to definitive treatment.

• Family advocacy: A clear, pregnancy-specific advance directive and on-site legal counsel might have empowered April Newkirk to contest forced somatic support and influence the care timeline.

• Patient-facing tools: Platforms like Diosa Ara can enable real-time symptom logging, provider alerts, and peer support—so warning signs aren’t missed and families can escalate concerns faster.

Because Adriana’s tragedy wasn’t inevitable but the product of missed signals and delayed action.

There is power in the hours and days between that first headache and the collapse—and in that space, there’s still time to save lives.

Your right to bodily autonomy should not end with pregnancy. Until laws catch up, the most powerful thing you can do is document your wishes, share them, and support the fight for real patient choice.

Reclaiming Christianity: Putting Christ Back at the Center

At the heart of Christianity is one command: love your neighbor. Not judge them. Not legislate their bodies. Not reject their identity. Just love.

Yet somewhere along the way, that truth was buried. Today, far-right movements invoke Christianity not as a faith, but as a political weapon—used to demonize the marginalized and punish differences. Their version of Christianity is loud, punitive, and fundamentally antithetical to Christ’s spirit of love.

The distortion runs so deep that even some of the most extreme members of the Catholic Church have gone so far as to reject the Pope’s authority—an act that defies the very structure of their faith. What they practice may wear the label “Christianity,” but it bears little resemblance to the life and teachings of Christ.

Let’s be clear: Christ did not preach vengeance or exclusion—those belong to God alone. He called us to feed the hungry, care for the sick, uplift the poor, and welcome the stranger. And yet, how often do those who shout “Christian values” the loudest focus on these acts of love? Instead, they spend their energy demonizing trans people, attacking women’s autonomy, and using selective scripture to promote fear and punishment.

🛑 The greatest sin isn’t who you are—it’s turning people away from Christ’s love.

By making the church a source of hate rather than refuge, they are pushing countless young people away. The cost of their hypocrisy is profound—not just for individuals, but for the soul of our communities.

Reclaiming Pro-Life: Beyond the Empty Slogan

Similarly, the term “pro-life” has also been hollowed out—reduced to a slogan that often lacks any real commitment to protecting life.

If you claim to be pro-life, ask yourself:

‼️ How many lives have you improved?

‼️ Have you fed the hungry?

‼️ Housed the homeless?

‼️ Stood for the vulnerable?

‼️ Where is the compassion behind the claim?

‼️ The action behind the rhetoric?

Consider this: the very states that restrict abortion most aggressively are the same ones with the highest maternal and infant mortality rates. They refuse to expand healthcare access, leaving countless women and children to suffer needlessly. They support the death penalty, neglect public health crises, and cut funding for programs that could save lives. Is this what “pro-life” looks like?

If we truly valued life, we would:

• Ensure access to affordable, comprehensive healthcare.

• Address the systemic causes of maternal mortality.

• Fight for policies that uplift women, children, and families.

• Reject systems—like capital punishment—that devalue human life.

Instead, what we see is a selective, inconsistent and deeply hypocritical ideology that ignores the lives it claims to protect.

This is not “pro-life”—it’s pro-control.

Moving Forward: A Call to Action

As a Christian, my faith doesn’t compel me to judge or exclude. It calls me to serve, to love, to act. That’s what Christ taught. And that’s what real Christianity—and real pro-life advocacy—should look like.

To those who’ve been harmed, rejected, or disillusioned by the hate masquerading as faith: please hear this—what you experienced was not Christ.

To my fellow Christians, I urge you to reclaim these words and live their true meaning. Let your faith be visible not in condemnation, but in compassion. Let your values be reflected not in slogans, but in service.

The next time someone claims to stand for Christianity or pro-life, ask them:

“What have you done to uplift others? To heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to protect the vulnerable?”

Their answer—or their silence—will tell you everything.

Let’s reclaim what was always meant to be ours: a faith centered in love. A movement grounded in life. A truth that uplifts rather than oppresses.

The world is watching. And now, more than ever, it needs us to live what we believe.

Her heart was beating because machines made it beat.

Her body was breathing because a ventilator forced it to.

But her brain—the part of her that made her a person—was gone.

She had suffered a catastrophic brain injury from untreated cerebral clots.

Doctors at Emory University Hospital declared her brain dead on February 19, 2025.

And yet… they didn’t let her go.

Instead, her body was kept on life support for almost four more months. Not for her.

But for the fetus inside her.

Her family was told they had no say.

Why? Because Georgia law said the fetus had rights of its own.

🧠 What Is Brain Death—And Why It Matters

Brain death is legal death.

It’s not a coma. Not a vegetative state. Not something people “wake up” from.

When a person is brain dead, they are dead.

No EEG activity. No brainstem reflexes. No capacity to breathe without a machine.

Under standard law and clinical ethics, once brain death is confirmed:

Life support can be withdrawn.

The body is released to the family.

End-of-life wishes (or those of next-of-kin) are followed.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But that’s not what happened in Georgia.

⚖️ What Georgia’s Law Says—and How It Was Used

In 2019, Georgia passed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act—also known as the “heartbeat bill.” It bans most abortions after six weeks and gives embryos and fetuses legal personhood once cardiac activity is detected.

Adriana’s fetus was roughly 8–9 weeks old when she was declared brain dead.

That meant, under Georgia law, her fetus was considered a legal person—a patient with rights.

Emory Hospital interpreted the law this way:

“We cannot remove life support. The fetus is alive. That would be ending a life.”

Her family, horrified, was told:

“You don’t have a say. Because she was pregnant.”

The hospital (Emory University Hospital Midtown) remained relatively tight-lipped, citing patient privacy, but did issue statements that they were following “Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws” and using “consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance” in making treatment decisions.

In other words, the hospital’s ethics committee and legal team had presumably concluded that withdrawing life support could violate state law given the fetus’s legal status.

Indeed, legal analysts pointed out that the Georgia law’s personhood provision might have put the hospital in a position of seeing two patients – and feeling a legal obligation to protect the fetus’s life once Smith’s body could be used as a life-sustaining environment.

“These are the kind of cases that law professors have been talking about for a long time when they talk about fetal personhood,” noted law professor David S. Cohen .

🧾 Could Adriana Have Stopped This Herself?

Even if Adriana had filled out an advance directive saying “Do not keep me on life support,” it wouldn’t have mattered.

Georgia—like many other states—nullifies advance directives during pregnancy.

That means:

• A pregnant person’s wishes can be legally ignored.

• Even brain death may not end care.

• The fetus’s potential life can override the patient’s autonomy.

So unless Adriana had legal documentation specifically addressing pregnancy and brain death (which most people don’t), her prior wishes were legally void.

Her family, who knew her best, were left helpless.

🧭 What the Attorney General Said—Too Late

In May 2025, as the case drew national attention, Georgia’s Attorney General made a surprising statement:

“Nothing in the LIFE Act requires hospitals to keep a brain-dead woman on life support.”

Legally, they argued, removing life support from a deceased person was not an “abortion”—because the intent wasn’t to terminate the pregnancy, just to end futile medical intervention.

But by that point, Emory Hospital had already made its call.

They had interpreted the law conservatively.

And in the absence of clear legal protection, they chose the fetus over the family.

In a statement, the AG’s spokesperson said:

“Removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.” 

In fact, Georgia’s abortion statute does not explicitly address the scenario of a brain-dead pregnant patient, and it includes exceptions for the life or health of the mother (which arguably could apply in a case where the mother is already deceased).

Some Georgia officials went so far as to call the law “completely irrelevant” to Smith’s case, accusing activists and media of mischaracterizing the intent of the legislation .

Nonetheless, others – including State Sen. Ed Setzler, the very author of the heartbeat law – praised the hospital’s actions as “completely appropriate” and lauded the effort to save the fetus.

Setzler said he was “thankful that the hospital recognizes the full value of the small human life living inside of this regrettably dying young mother,” hoping the child would “grow into vibrant adulthood” and calling it a silver lining that at least one life might be saved out of the tragedy .

Influential anti-abortion groups like Students for Life echoed that stance, arguing that keeping Smith on somatic support was the right thing to do under the law.

🏥 What Happens When Law and Medicine Collide

This case reveals a chilling truth about post-Roe America:

• Laws written to protect fetuses are being used to override adult patients’ rights.

• Hospitals, fearing liability, are deferring to legal interpretation—not ethical standards.

• Families are being stripped of authority—even after their loved one is legally dead.

Adriana Smith became a vessel.

Her body was maintained for the fetus inside her.

Her humanity was secondary.

Her mother called it “torture.”

She watched her daughter turn 31—on a ventilator.

She sat by her bedside, unable to say goodbye.

This clash of interpretations highlights a profound ethical dilemma. At its core is the question: Who has the right to decide in a case where a pregnant patient can no longer speak for herself?

Before the fall of Roe v. Wade, it would have been standard for a brain-dead person’s next of kin or designated medical proxy to make decisions about continuing or discontinuing life-sustaining treatment.

In Georgia, as in many states, an individual can fill out an advance directive for healthcare – but notably, Georgia law invalidates such directives during pregnancy unless the fetus is already viable outside the womb (viability is generally ~23–24 weeks; Smith was only 9 weeks pregnant at brain death).

This “pregnancy exclusion” meant that even if Smith had documented wishes not to be kept on life support, those wishes could not be honored at the time she collapsed.

Still, absent a specific law compelling intervention, ordinarily her mother (as next of kin) would have been able to decide to remove life support given the futility of Smith’s condition.

Post-Roe abortion bans introduced a new wildcard: fear among providers and hospitals that withdrawing support (and thus losing the fetus) might expose them to legal liability under strict fetal-protective laws.

As legal experts noted, these laws have “removed patient autonomy when they are pregnant,” creating scenarios where it’s “not clear who we are making decisions for anymore”.

In Smith’s case, the hospital essentially made the decision on behalf of the fetus, effectively using Smith’s body as an incubator against her prior wishes or her family’s wishes. Reproductive rights advocates found this deeply troubling, arguing that the state’s intervention had “denied the family the ability to even make a decision about their loved one”.

An ethicist from Compassion & Choices described Smith as “being used as a means to an end in a really, really heartbreaking way,” with the woman’s own dignity and humanity sidelined for the sake of the pregnancy.

The nationwide debate spurred by Smith’s story touched on other cases and concerns as well. Medical experts noted that maintaining a brain-dead woman on support from such an early point in pregnancy (only 9 weeks along) with hopes of a healthy baby at the end is virtually uncharted territory – most reported cases of prolonged somatic support in pregnancy have occurred later in gestation (late second or third trimester).

The toll on the mother’s body and the resources required are enormous: in one published case in Florida, a brain-dead woman at 22 weeks was kept on ICU support until 33 weeks, requiring continuous monitoring, hormone treatments, infection control with multiple antibiotics, and a large team of specialists; even then the intervention was considered costly and extraordinary.

Smith’s case pushed these boundaries further, raising questions of how far medical systems should go, and at what cost, to potentially save a fetus.

Notably, Smith’s mother had launched a GoFundMe campaign to help with expenses, indicating that the baby “could have significant disabilities” and setting a goal of $275,000 for care. Thus, the practical and financial implications of such mandated life support were also part of the conversation.

Ethics in a Post-Roe World — Who Gets to Decide?

In the wake of Dobbs, advance directives are suddenly full of loopholes for pregnant patients.

Many standard forms explicitly exclude any “extraordinary measures” that might prolong death—but then carve out an exception for pregnancy.

That means your documented end-of-life wishes disappear the moment you test positive.

Hospital ethics boards now shoulder decisions in these legal grey zones.

— When no clear directive exists, ethics committees convene: OB, ICU, legal, chaplaincy.

— They wrestle with questions like, “Are we honoring the patient, or the fetus?”

— As one ethicist put it, “It’s not clear who we are making decisions for anymore.”

Fetal personhood statutes complicate things further.

— In many states, laws grant the fetus independent rights—even after maternal brain death.

— Doctors become proxy parents to a legal “person” whose interests may conflict with the patient’s prior wishes.

— Removing life support can be deemed “feticide,” exposing providers to criminal liability.

These dynamics play out very differently across socioeconomic lines.

— Poor families, lacking access to high-powered legal counsel, rarely see their advance directives honored.

— Families of color report feeling sidelined by committees that implicitly assign lesser weight to their voices.

— One community advocate observed, “When money and race intersect, it’s the patient’s autonomy that vanishes first.”

In this post-Roe reality, the most vulnerable pregnant patients find themselves stripped of choice—subject to a patchwork of statutes, hospital policies, and committee judgments.

And the question remains:

Who truly gets to decide when there is no clear patient left to speak for?

Medical experimentation disguised under an antiabortion veneer.

I want to be crystal clear about something — however carefully the hospital sought to redefine the narrative, the core facts remain unchanged. A brain‑dead mother and a pre‑viable fetus were maintained on full life‑support in circumstances for which no protocol exists and no ethical consensus has been reached. In one jurisdiction those machines would have been disconnected; in another, they would have remained. That interstate variability is not the mark of settled science—it is the hallmark of improvised practice. Trial. Error. And in the middle of it all, a family forced to watch as their loved ones became the variables.

It is impossible to divorce this reality from medicine’s long, well‑documented history of experimenting on Black bodies—J. Marion Sims’s unanesthetized gynecologic surgeries on enslaved women, the non‑consensual harvesting of Henrietta Lacks’s cells, the forced sterilizations of Black, Brown, and Indigenous women throughout the 20th century. Whenever the profession edges up against its ethical limits, it too often tests those limits on us.

This case is no exception.

We must therefore ask: Had this patient been white, affluent, or legally represented from day one, would her death have been considered final rather than provisional? Would the hospital have hesitated before venturing into ethically uncharted territory?

Because what transpired was not an inevitable tragedy—it was a series of conscious choices. Choices that treated a Black woman’s body as an instrument even in death, that privileged a speculative fetal outcome over a moral reckoning, and that echoed centuries of reproductive violence wrapped in the language of care.

💡 What You Need to Know

If you’re pregnant—or could become pregnant—you deserve to understand what these laws mean for you.

📝 Check your state’s laws on pregnancy exclusions.

Some states invalidate advance directives during pregnancy. Others limit decision-making power if a fetus is viable.

📜 Update your Advance Care Directive (ACD).

Make sure it includes pregnancy-specific language. If you don’t want to be kept on life support while brain dead, say so—clearly, explicitly, and legally.

⚖️ Know that “personhood” laws don’t just affect abortion—they can affect life, death, and everything in between.

In a post-Roe world, fetal rights are expanding. But maternal rights? Often shrinking.

🧩 What This Means for All of Us

This wasn’t just a medical tragedy.

It was a legal failure. An ethical failure. A policy failure.

Adriana Smith was denied her voice.

Her family was denied their role.

And her death became a prolonged spectacle of state control.

Her body deserved peace.

Her family deserved dignity.

And we all deserve laws that don’t turn dead women into incubators.

Next: The Baby She Carried—and the Risks He Faces

In Part 5, we’ll follow the birth of Baby Chance—Adriana’s premature son—delivered by C-section at 25 weeks.

We’ll explore what it means to survive as a micro-preemie, the medical challenges he faces, and the quiet burdens families carry after the public headlines fade.

Because this story didn’t end with life support.

It continued in an incubator.

And that, too, deserves to be understood.