[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 96 (Thursday, June 5, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H2478]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ADRIANA SMITH

  (Ms. Pressley of Massachusetts was recognized to address the House 
for 5 minutes.)
  Ms. PRESSLEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share the story of Adriana 
Smith.
  Adriana Smith was a 30-year-old nurse from Georgia and the mother of 
a vibrant 5-year-old boy. She started to experience debilitating 
headaches, and she sought medical care. She was discharged and her pain 
was dismissed, as is so often the case for Black women in this country 
and certainly in our healthcare system.
  The next morning, Adriana woke up gasping for air and was taken to 
Emory Hospital, where she was declared brain dead.
  There are no words to provide healing for a pain this deep--a 
dedicated and loving mother, a compassionate nurse, gone at the age of 
30.
  In the days that followed, Adriana's family and son should have been 
able to make a solemn, independent decision about what happened next as 
they celebrated her life; as they mourned this devastating loss; as 
they pieced their lives back together; and as they began helping their 
5-year-old cope with the grief and loss of his precious mother.
  Yet, the State of Georgia denied Adriana her bodily autonomy and 
dignity in death. In the days and weeks that followed, her family found 
themselves in a desperate battle with Emory Hospital.
  The hospital believed that the anti-abortion bill that Georgia 
enacted in 2022 following the gutting of Roe v. Wade tied the 
hospital's hands and mandated that Adriana's body, her brain-dead body, 
remain hooked to machines. Mr. Speaker, this was not because there was 
any chance of survival, she had already transitioned, but because 
Adriana was 9 weeks pregnant, about a month past a missed period. 
Adriana's body has been turned into an incubator; an incubator with no 
medical rationale, no ethical reason, and no compassion.
  Mr. Speaker, from the days of enslavement, Black women's bodies have 
been subjected to medical abuse, assault, and degradation in this 
country. We are more likely to die in childbirth. We are routinely 
denied medical care. We are dehumanized. Like in the case of Adriana 
Smith, our bodies and our dignity are desecrated in death.
  This is cruelty. It is the latest episode in a long history of the 
experimentation and exploitation of Black bodies. I grieve for 
Adriana's family, for the torture they are experiencing layered with 
the daily uncertainty that they are navigating as they try to do right 
by their daughter and lay her to rest peacefully.
  Her parents are by her bedside. Her 5-year-old asked: When will Mommy 
wake up?
  Adriana should be here today, her blood clots treated, her voice 
trusted, and her pain believed. She should be decorating a nursery for 
her little son with her family and celebrating her son's last day of 
kindergarten, but Adriana's body lies hooked to machines in a hospital 
bed as part of an unjust medical experiment for more than 3 months. No 
family should have to endure this.
  None of us are free until all of us are free.

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