A Black Executive Perspective Now presents need to know with the award-winning hyphenated Dr. Nsenga Burton. Dr. Burton, what do we need to know?

Good afternoon and welcome to Need To Know with Dr. Nsenga Burton. I am she. And today we're gonna be talking about a topic that is, um. Yeah, very, very, uh, difficult topic to talk about, I think for a lot of people. Um, but you may have been, uh, you may have been following the story of Adriana Smith. Um, a young mother, uh, and nurse, uh, in Atlanta, Georgia, who unfortunately became brain dead. And when, uh, she became brain dead, it was found to have been nine weeks pregnant. And because of the. Heartbeat Bill. Uh, basically a law in Georgia that says, uh, fetuses have the rights of humans. She was forcibly kept alive versus the wishes of her family, um, to let her go be with God, um, in order to have the baby. So she is a, uh, mother. Of another child with her husband, partner, she has an entire family and she, her wishes were not to be kept alive by artificial means. So I'm bringing you this because there is a lot of discussion about reproductive rights in this country. There are a lot of anti reproductive rights bills and the challenge with them is whether where you fall on the, you know, whether you're for pro, whatever. Uh, people have reproductive rights, is that family business is family business and decisions need to be made for you and yours by you and yours, and so you can't consider all of the possibilities that could happen because I just have to believe that even people who are pro-life would understand what her mother calls the terror quote. And trauma quote of having to revisit the death of your child every single day until someone else says, okay, this fetus has grown enough where we can take this fetus. So they, uh, took the fetus. 'cause they keep saying, and here's the other thing about, uh, media that pisses me off. They keep saying she gave birth to this child. She did not give birth to this child, the baby. If you wanna call it a baby, the fetus grew and became a baby, um, basically in a dead body. So anyone who's been a parent, anyone who's been pregnant, imagine how important the environment is for a child. I. At this precarious time. Now, we've talked extensively about maternal mortality rates, how they're negatively impacting all women, but black women, specifically state of Georgia, has stopped counting them. At one point, they were the nation's leader in maternal mortality as it relates to black women. They no longer count maternal mortalities. Um, and just like with COVID, when they stopped counting the number of dead people. That is a way to skew numbers so that you do not look like you are participating in a system or a process that is having negative consequences on a certain population of people. Having said that, she did not give birth to this baby. The baby was taken from her via Cesarean section C-section, and media has been. Poorly, poorly, poorly communicating to people that she gave birth. Now, there are different ways of giving birth. There are different ways of bringing babies into the world, but they should not conflate the two when in fact someone is brain dead and cannot push. They cannot be experiencing any of the labor, any of that. They are not knowledgeable of any of it. So that is something different. That is something different and you do a disservice to people. And I think it, it could be in an effort to continue to promote people voting for pro-life, um, legislation that has negative consequences on women's bodies, uh, particularly when women are not allowed to make their own decisions, their families, their spouses, their parents. Are not allowed to make decisions for them. Their, their decisions for themselves are not even being followed, uh, when traumatic incidences occur. And so now the family's traumatized and the family's on the hook. I also have to say this, there is a GoFundMe. Why? Because the family's on the hook for the cost of keeping this woman alive for months. This happened in February. We are in June, about to be in July. How do we know that they do not care about this woman and this child because the family should not be on the hook because it went against their wishes. Right? They're following the law, right? Not what she wanted, not what her family wanted, and because they're such wonderful people, our attorney general, that would be George's Attorney General, has said. There was no obligation for the hospital to follow the law in that case. Could have said that in February. Comes out with it in June. What does that mean? Or how am I experiencing that? This case has been a, a, a, a hailstorm to make to, to, uh, to be polite about it. Um, and that means now because he. Who's up for reelection is now under siege because of what has happened to this woman, or they allowed to happen to this woman. Um, he used to distance themself from this decision that was made. It also means that by distancing themselves from this decision that is made, they can continue to say they are not responsible for the financial, uh, ramifications. So I'm gonna wrap this up. The boy was born, taken from the mom. And he's one pound and he's in the NICU and they say he's okay. So we don't know what that means. You know, we've all, uh, I won't say we all, but many people who've had children have been around children. You have nieces and nephews or what have you, who've been in those precarious situations, um, knows that anything had happened. He grew up and be a, a, have a full life or he'd be damaged. There's lots of things that can happen. Um, so we don't even know what the cost would be, but what I do find interesting is that. People will spend millions of dollars on a GoFundMe, contribute millions of dollars to a police officer who has killed an unarmed boy like Trayvon Martin, a life Jordan, a life. We keep going, um, but we can't get over a million dollars for Adriana Smith at life. And the life that was brought forth from her by being cut out of her by people who followed the law instead of what is she wanted and what her family wanted for her body. And by the way, her 3-year-old thought his mom was asleep all that time, then burying her on Friday. So what I need you to know is that elections have consequences. You can keep talking about all this. Oh, this is what we gotta do. You know, I believe in this and that you cannot control everything. You don't know what is in store for you. We don't even know if we're gonna be here tomorrow, truly, especially with 47 in office. So I just encourage you to know the law, to understand voting, and to understand what the ramifications. Are for those votes, and if you truly believe as you say that God is all knowing, then how do you know that God did not intend for her to come to him on February 25th? So sorry, I couldn't be happy today. I'm not. Um, I'll do better than the next one. I probably will. Um, but I just think you need to know that women should have rights to their bodies, and there's a reason why we say we need to have rights to our bodies. This is a great example of why tune in next week to an A Black Executive Perspective podcast with Tony and Chris. And to need to know with Dr. Nsenga Burton. I will see you then. Be happy, be focused. Keep your head on the swivel and be safe. Bye. A Black Executive Perspective