Several days ago, I posted this horrible story about a young woman in Georgia who is on life support. She is brain dead. Because she was nine weeks pregnant when her brain died, Georgia law requires that she be kept in a vegetative state until the fetus can be delivered at 36 weeks.
“The decision should have been left to us- not the state”, says her family
Telnaes quit her job at The Washington Post when her editor refused to publish a cartoon showing the tech billionaires bowing to Trump. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, was one of them. Telnaes won a Pulitzer Prize for that cartoon.
This is one of the saddest stories I have read in a long time. Georgia has one of the most draconian abortion laws in the nation. Because of that law, a woman who is brain-dead will be kept “alive” until she gives birth. She is nine weeks pregnant. The baby will be removed when it reaches 32 weeks. One of those Bible-thumpers should offer to adopt the baby. Lots of Bible-thumpers or the State Legislature should pay the outrageous bills that will pile up.
Adriana Smith of Atlanta, Georgia, has been brain dead for more than 90 days.
Back in February, Smith — a registered nurse at Emory University Hospital — started experiencing intense headaches and went to get checked out at a local hospital, because she knew “enough to know something was wrong.”
“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive news. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”
The next morning, Smith’s boyfriend discovered her gasping for air and gurgling on what he believed was blood. She went back to the hospital, where they finally did a CT scan and discovered multiple blood clots in her brain. Unfortunately, they were too late and Smith was declared brain dead as they prepared to go into surgery.
This would have been a horrific enough scenario under normal circumstances, but Smith was also nine weeks pregnant … and in Georgia. Georgia has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation, 33.9 deaths per 100,000 live births — 48.6 per 100,000 for Black women and 22.7 for white and Hispanic women. Part of that is because women like Adriana Smith are ignored when they tell doctors that something is wrong.
Georgia also has a “Heartbeat Law” that bans abortion after fetal pole cardiac activity is detected (but before there is even an actual heart).
Because of Georgia’s garbage abortion ban, Smith now has to be kept on life support until the fetus is 32 weeks along and can be removed. Like, they are literally using her dead body as an incubator for a fetus.
Please, take a moment to scream into a nearby throw pillow, if you need it.
Under Georgia’s heartbeat law, abortion is banned once cardiac activity is detected — typically around six weeks into pregnancy. The law includes limited exceptions for rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger. But in Adriana’s case, the law created a legal gray area.
Because she is brain dead — no longer considered at risk herself — her medical team is legally required to maintain life support until the fetus reaches viability.
The family said doctors told them they are not legally allowed to consider other options. […]
Now, due to the state abortion ban, Smith is being kept on life support.
“She’s been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,” Newkirk said. “It’s torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there. And her son — I bring him to see her.”
Newkirk said it’s been heartbreaking seeing her grandson believe his mother is “just sleeping.”
It would be bad enough if the state were just forcing the family to keep Smith “alive” on life support in order to be an incubator for the fetus, but they’re also requiring them to pay for it. While it’s not exactly easy to track down exact costs, an ICU bed in a Georgia non-profit hospital costs, on average, $2,402 a day on its own, without any additional treatment. According to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, mechanical ventilation costs, on average, “$3,900 per day after the fourth day.” So that’s $6302 a day just for the basics. Then there’s everything else on top of that.
So we’re already at $1.6 million before even getting into the cost of the baby’s care. The average stay in the NICU for a baby born at 32 weeks is 36 days, and a NICU stay can cost $3,000 to $20,000 a day. That is more likely to be covered by health insurance — though it is not actually clear if the baby would be covered by Smith’s health insurance if she’s dead, or for how long. And that’s just in the beginning. It is hard to imagine that a kid born in those circumstances would not have some pretty serious health issues down the road.
I am going to need to point out, for the 80 bajillionth time, that the people who love the idea of forcing a woman to give birth against their will (or while braindead) are almost universally against universal health care. Especially the ones who are going around crying about “birth rates.”
I’m not saying it would make anything okay, it wouldn’t, but the very fact that these absolute pieces of shit want to force people to give birth against their will and pay for the privilege as well is galling. In this case, the state wants to force this family to pay possibly $1.6 million or more to keep a brain dead woman alive so that she can give birth to a fetus that was only nine weeks along when she died.
Perhaps it’s crass to think of money, given the fact that keeping a woman on life support just to incubate a fetus is appalling enough on its own. And it is. But a nearly two million dollar surcharge is a hell of an added insult to injury.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, answers questions from senators during her confirmation hearing while surrounded by family members in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Credit: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP
The nominee to become the next and, President Donald Trump vows, last secretary of education assured U.S. senators on Thursday that there are no plans to shut down the Department of Education or to cut spending that Congress has already approved for the department.
Linda McMahon, however, said she would be open to moving programs to other departments, such as sending the Office of Civil Rights to the Justice Department.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, brought up funding early in the two-hour hearing on the nomination.
“If the department is downsized, would the states and localities still receive the federal funding that they currently receive?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s not the president’s goal to defund the programs. It’s only to have it operate more efficiently,” she said.
Closing the department, a longtime goal of conservative Republicans, was one of Trump’s campaign promises. Calling the department a “con job” this week, he has said repeatedly that McMahon’s goal should be to shrink the department, to “put herself out of a job.”
But Trump also acknowledged that only Congress can dismantle what it established in 1980 during the Carter administration. At the hearing, McMahon affirmed that she would work with Congress to follow the law.
With husband Vince, McMahon, 76, founded a successful sports entertainment company that later became World Wrestling Entertainment, and served as its president, then its CEO for 30 years. McMahon served as Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration in his first administration. She also served for a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education in 2009 and is a longtime trustee of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, but otherwise has had little involvement in education.
Democratic senators did not press her on her lack of education experience, although Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, did push her to name a requirement for schools to show improvement under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the principal law determining accountability for K-12 schools. She could not.
Instead, they questioned her on Trump’s plan to ship federal funding to states as block grants without federal oversight, his intention to expand parental school choice, and his threats to cut funding for colleges that allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports and for schools that continue policies for diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.
‘Invest in teachers, not bureaucrats’
McMahon made clear in her opening statement she is in sync with the president’s assessment of education.
Calling the nation’s schools a “system in decline,” she said, “we can do better for elementary and junior high school students by teaching basic reading and mathematics; for the college freshmen facing censorship or antisemitism on campus, and for parents and grandparents who worry that their children and grandchildren are no longer taught American values and true history.”
“So what’s the remedy?” she asked. “Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”
McMahon expressed support for continuing federal funding for Title I in support of low-income students, and for students with disabilities under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). However, she will investigate whether IDEA should remain in the department.
“When IDEA was originally set up, it was under the Department of Health and Welfare. After the Department of Education was established, it shifted over there,” she said. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in Health and Human Services, but I don’t know. If I’m confirmed, it is of high priority to make sure that the students who are receiving disability funding (are) not impacted.”
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, called her commitment to continued funding “gaslighting.”
Even as the hearing was happening, Republicans in the House were working on “reconciliation” bills that called for possibly balancing massive continued personal income tax cuts with hundreds of billions in funding cuts for Medicaid and education.
This week, Elon Musk’s budget-cutting SWAT team known as DOGE, cut $881 million in research contracts without notice. Other education grants associated with DEI received termination notices, too.
McMahon said DOGE’s “audit” of the department was appropriate. “I believe the American people spoke loudly in the election last November, to say that they want to look at waste, fraud and abuse in our government.” Trump recently fired the Department of Education’s independent inspector general, Sandra D. Bruce, whose job was to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
Watch: Linda McMahon said DOGE’s “audit” of the department was appropriate.
“I understand an audit,” Murray said. “But when Congress appropriates money, it is the administration’s responsibility to put that out, as directed by Congress who has the power of the purse. So what will you do if the president or Elon Musk tells you not to spend money Congress has appropriated to you?”
“We’ll certainly expend those dollars that Congress has passed,” McMahon responded. “But I do think it is worthwhile to take a look at the programs before the money goes out the door. It’s much easier to stop the money before it goes out the door than it is to claw it back.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said schools across the nation are “scrambling because they have no idea what DEI means” and are worried they will lose funding. He presented two scenarios that pointed to ambiguities in the executive order.
If a school in Connecticut celebrates Martin Luther King Day events and programming teaching about Black history, does it violate or run afoul of DEI prohibitions? he asked.
“Not, in my view, that is clearly not the case,” McMahon said. “That celebration of Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month should be celebrated throughout all of our schools.”
Murphy continued, “What about educational programming centered around specific ethnic and racial experiences? My son is in a public school. He takes African American History. Could you perhaps be in violation of this executive order?”
“I’m, I’m not quite certain,” McMahon said. “I would like to take a look at these programs and fully understand the breadth of the executive order and get back to you on that.”
As with all of Trump’s nominees so far, McMahon is expected to win a majority vote in the Senate, possibly along party lines, later this month.
