When You're a Woman, Even Death Won’t Save You From Misogyny

Her soul is gone. But the state is still harvesting her body.

When I’m particularly aware of the state of the world, you know, when the misogyny feels less like background noise and more like a high-pitched, unbearable hum, there’s one oddly comforting thought I return to: at least one day I’ll be dead.

At least one day I’ll stop being a sentient woman navigating the exhausting bureaucracy of sexism. Death, for all its cruelty, has always seemed like a kind of relief. A final unsubscription from the men in power who make laws about bodies they don’t understand. From the casual dehumanization that comes with simply existing while female. The upside of my life being over is that I won’t have to think about what twisted sexist idea is rolling around in JD Vance’s thick head. I won’t have to worry about my body being objectified, dismissed, or violated.

But this week, even that fantasy, the idea that we might one day be free, was taken away from us.

In Georgia, a woman who is brain dead is being kept alive on life support because she was pregnant. Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mom is legally dead. Her soul is gone. But the state is still harvesting her body. The government isn’t just forcing her parents to keep her alive against their wishes. They’re also forcing them to foot the bill, because the government won’t let her be buried until her womb finishes the job. Her family started a Go Fund Me which you can donate to to help them cover the costs.

Her brain no longer bears witness to the misogyny she’s enduring, but her body is still conscripted by it. Even in the absence of consciousness. Even in the absence of life. Her uterus remains public property.

When you’re a woman, they won’t even let you die.

When you’re a woman, even your corpse isn’t yours.

When you’re a woman, even your ghost is governed.

If this were happening to men, we’d be calling it what it is: torture. Imagine a man is declared brain dead. His family is grieving. But the state intervenes and says, actually, his body is still useful. We’ll keep his corpse functioning—not to save him, but to complete a process he never consented to finish. Imagine they strapped his body to machines, forced his parents to pay for it, and said: We’ll bury him when we’re done with what’s left inside. That wouldn’t be law. That would be science fiction. That would be war.

It’s akin to the Jim Crow laws that forbade Black people from escaping racism, even in death. Lynching victims were denied burial. Families were denied the right to mourn. There were laws that explicitly forbade Black people from being buried near white people. Even in death, their bodies were denied the dignity of rest. Of silence. Of simply leaving this world in peace. It should not be lost on us that one of the states where these laws existed is Georgia. And that the woman this is happening to is a Black woman. The same demographic most at risk when sexists and white supremacists fill the White House, write the laws, and call it freedom.

As I’ve written before, we’ve created a caste system in this country where the people most in need of care, pregnant women, have become the untouchables. Not sacred. Not protected. Not respected. Unseen. Unheld. Avoided. Doctors are scared of them. Hospitals stall and stall. No one wants to treat them, not because they’re not human, but because they’re too human. Legally and politically radioactive.

It’s not a bug in the system. It is the system.

Forcing birth in a country where giving birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do is a human rights violation, point blank. And now, with cases like this one in Georgia, we’re not just forcing birth. We’re forcing women’s corpses to stay alive just so we can keep denying their dignity even when they’re gone.

And the government still has the audacity to clutch their pearls and ask, why aren’t women getting pregnant?

It’s stories like this.

It’s stories like this, dude.

That remind you this country doesn’t hate women softly. It hates us loud. It hates us legally. It hates us even after we’re gone.

Before you go, please remember to subscribe to my new podcast Boy Problems and send me your boy problems by emailing boyproblems@katiecouric.com or by using this anonymous form! No question or too big or too small, please include as many details as possible and you could end up on the show :)