AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to Georgia, where there’s growing concern about the plight of a pregnant woman who’s been declared brain dead but has kept on life support for three months against the wishes of her distraught family because of Georgia’s abortion ban. Adriana Smith is a 30-year-old mother and nurse who suffered a medical emergency in February due to blood clots in the brain, was declared legally dead. At that point, she was about nine weeks pregnant. She’s now about 22 weeks pregnant, but doctors have kept her on breathing machines because her fetus was old enough to have detectable cardiac activity. Georgia’s “heartbeat law” bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

This comes as Georgia’s attorney general has said Georgia’s heartbeat bill does not require medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death, and issued a terse statement that, quote, “Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.'”

Georgia’s maternal and infant mortality rates are among the worst in the country, with Black women dying at twice the rate of white women.

We’re joined now by two guests. In Washington, D.C., Mini Timmaraju is with us, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America. And in Atlanta, we’re joined by Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, the national women of color reproductive justice collective that’s based in Georgia, has a lawsuit against Georgia, arguing its six-week abortion ban is denying people in Georgia lifesaving care.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Monica Simpson, let’s begin with you. Can you talk about the situation right now, what the family wants for their beloved, brain-dead loved one who is pregnant and who doctors are keeping on life support?

MONICA SIMPSON: Thank you so much for having me.

It is a dire situation that we’re dealing with here in Georgia. And we are constantly having to navigate this system that keeps showing us over and over again that it is deadly to be Black and pregnant in this state, where access to care is so far out of reach for so many people, and the limitations and the criminalization that we are constantly navigating now with this abortion ban is something that Georgians did not want, and it’s something that we are constantly doing all that we can to push back against.

Adriana deserved to be here. What we know about her story is that she did what she knew what to do as a nurse. When she found out and she could feel in her own body that something was wrong, she went to the doctor. She went to get the care that she needed, and she was sent home. Now, if the doctors would have been — did everything they could, maybe we would have been able to get a different outcome for Adriana. But, unfortunately, that’s not what happened, because, unfortunately, that’s not what happens for so many Black women in this country. They are not trusted when they are going into their doctor’s offices. They’re not trusted when they are saying that there’s something wrong with their bodies. They’re not trusted when they are saying that they need access to care. And, unfortunately, that’s what happened to Adriana.

And so, now her family is battling such a hard time. They should be able to grieve. They should be able to take care of themselves and all of the family members who are having to deal with this ordeal. But, unfortunately, they’re having to navigate so many unanswered questions. They’re having to navigate something they shouldn’t have to, which is an abortion ban that’s connected to this issue, that should not even be at play at this particular moment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in Georgia, we’re talking about one of the states that has among the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the country, particularly for African American women and children. Could you talk about that?

MONICA SIMPSON: Absolutely. We are dealing in Georgia with maternal health deserts, right? Over half of our counties do not have access to an OB-GYN, so care is out of reach for so many. We are also a state that has yet to expand Medicaid, and we know, federally, we are still fighting for Medicaid to be something that Americans have access to, which means that there are thousands of people upon thousands of people who are falling in the cracks every single day, not having access to basic healthcare needs. So, when you add that to a state that has now put a six-week abortion ban in place, it makes it a very, very harsh environment for folks to be able to get access to what they need in terms of their reproductive healthcare.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it is amazing. Georgia’s Attorney General Chris Carr released a statement declaring that the six-week abortion ban doesn’t require medical professionals to keep women alive on life support after they’ve been declared brain dead, Monica.

MONICA SIMPSON: What I find very interesting about the times that we are in is that this abortion ban has created so many obstacles for people. There has been too many people who have tried to figure out what it means, when it means that, and that is the problem that we’re dealing with here. It is not cut and dry. It is not black and white. It is something that we’re having to constantly navigate over and over again.

At the end of last year, we lost two more Black women because of what this abortion ban put in place for them in terms of a barrier. We lost Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, right? These are two Black women who were also pregnant in our state that wanted to terminate a pregnancy and came up against the very real barriers that this abortion ban puts in place for folks.

And so, what is happening constantly, as we are getting these stories, as we’re understanding what the landscape is really looking like for people in Georgia because this abortion ban is in place, is that it is not a cut and dry — we’re not getting cut-and-dry answers here. We are dealing with folks who are in real time having to navigate too many questions, whenever it should be that we should have access to the real-time healthcare that we need in order for us to be able to thrive and to live our most healthy lives in Georgia. And that is not the case with this abortion ban that is currently in place.