Tell-It Report: Georgia Democrats Call for Abortion Law Clarity as Pregnant Woman Lies Brain-Dead

Adriana Smith has been on life support for three months and her family has no say because of Georgia’s “heartbeat bill.”

(Envato/ContrabandCamp)

In Gullah Geechee communities, a "tell-it" was a designated lookout, community warning system and the most trusted source for news and information. The Tell-It Report is ContrabandCamp’s weekly roundup of the Black stories that deserve more attention, from politics to entertainment.

Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Adriana Smith’s family is suffering the consequences as they watch her unborn fetus grow while she remains in a vegetative state. Three months into her being on life support, Georgia Democrats are demanding that Gov. Brian Kemp give clarity around the state’s six-week abortion ban.

Dollar General is next on Rev. Jamal Bryant’s list as the pastor who led the Target boycott calls for a digital protest. And Harvard University is relinquishing 175-year-old photos of enslaved Black people after a long legal battle with one of their descendants.

Read the full stories below:

Georgia Democrats push for clarity around abortion laws in the midst of Adriana Smith's case

Adriana Smith was pronounced brain-dead at eight weeks pregnant back in February after she went to the hospital for a medical emergency. Three months later, the 30-year-old remains at Emory University Hospital, with doctors citing Georgia’s six-week abortion ban as the reason they’re keeping her on life support. Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, organized a GoFundMe in which she stated the family “had no say so regarding her lifeless body and unborn child.”

Now, state Democrats are demanding that Gov. Brian Kemp clarify the legislation around the state’s abortion ban, according to Atlanta’s 11Alive.

During a Thursday morning press conference, State Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes said, “Women deserve the ability to give informed consent, and when they cannot, their families must be empowered to make decisions with full information and without fear."

Islam Parkes said that she sent Kemp a letter requesting that he get the attorney general to address whether life support is required in cases like Smiths, what legally qualifies as a medical emergency, how the law defines fetal conditions incompatible with life and why the guidance isn’t explicitly clear, the outlet reports.

"What rights do women have under this law? Georgians have been asking this question,” the state senator continued. “We as legislators have been asking this question, and the people standing here today have been asking this question. Yet Georgia's leadership has stayed silent."

Other advocates were also at the press conference, expressing their own stories about how the law prevents women from getting adequate care while pregnant, showing that this isn’t an isolated situation.

Smith, a registered nurse at Emory who also has a 7-year-old son, is about 23 weeks pregnant. According to 11Alive, doctors plan to keep Smith alive until the gestational period, at about 32 weeks.

“She’s pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born,” Newkirk told the outlet earlier this month. “This decision should’ve been left to us. Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have—and we’re going to be the ones raising him."

Since Newkirk posted the GoFundMe on May 15, the family has raised more than $129,000, which could potentially be used for the family’s growing hospital bills.

Emory Healthcare sent a statement to NPR, stating that it uses “consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualized treatment recommendations in compliance with Georgia's abortion laws and all other applicable laws.” The statement continued, "Our top priorities continue to be the safety and well-being of the patients we serve."

In a written statement, Attorney General Chris Carr told Fox 5 Atlanta, “There is nothing in the Life Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death. Removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate.”

Jamal Bryant, who led the boycott of Target, is now going after Dollar General

Jamal-Harrison Bryant, the Georgia-based pastor who led the boycott against Target, is now urging consumers to protest Dollar General for abandoning their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, USA Today reports.

Last week, the senior pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church called on community members to engage in an electronic protest that consists of flooding their phone lines, email and social media accounts.

Bryant told the outlet that the discount chain quietly abandoned its DEI policies.

“We chose Dollar General because ... they're three times larger than Target and Walmart combined, and have never given to any organization within the Black community,” Bryant told CNN. “There are more than 20,000 Dollar General stores in the continental U.S., according to Statista, compared with about 2,000 Target and 4,600 Walmart stores.”

The pressure is in hopes that the retailer recommits to DEI. Since Dollar General can be the only food retailer in some rural areas, Bryant isn’t calling for a total ban. However, he’s urging customers in urban areas to stay away.

Dollar General’s Instagram is already flooded with comments. “Shame on you @dollargeneral for your business practices and lack of humanitarian efforts towards the very communities that drive your revenue,” one user wrote. Another commenter wrote, “@dollargeneral You better make this right, before we show you like @target.”

Since Bryant and other leaders called for a Target boycott after the company announced it was moving away from its DEI policies, the retail outlet’s numbers have plummeted drastically, according to Fortune.

Bryant told USA Today that the Target blackout will be indefinite.

"Target is canceled since they have betrayed and walked away from our community, and we've gone on from there,'' he said. "We're done with Target, and then our next focus will be around Dollar General."

Harvard relinquishes early photos of enslaved people, ending legal battle

Harvard University will return 175-year-old daguerreotypes of two enslaved Black people after a long legal battle with a woman who says she’s their descendant, the Associated Press reports.

Tamara Lanier said the photos depict her great-great-great-grandfather, Renty, and his daughter, Delia. The photos were initially taken for Harvard professor Louis Agassi and used “as evidence for a discredited pseudoscientific theory of Black racial inferiority” to support enslavement, according to The New York Times. The photos will not be given to Lanier but will instead be transferred from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., where the two were enslaved. Five other images of enslaved people will join them.

“I have been at odds with Harvard over the custody and care of my enslaved ancestors, and now I can rest assured that my enslaved ancestors will be traveling to a new home,” Lanier told the Times. “They will be returning to their home state where this all began, and they will be placed in an institution that can celebrate their humanity.”

Lanier, who lives in Norwich, Connecticut, filed a lawsuit against the university in 2019 in hopes of retaining the photos, which Harvard uncovered in its museum in 1976, according to CBS News. Lanier and her lawyers said that the institution "made no effort to locate the subjects' descendants and instead began to display and license the images for profit." Though she lost the initial battle, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Lanier could sue Harvard for emotional distress. This settlement is a result of that lawsuit.

“This is a moment in history where the sons and daughters of stolen ancestors can stand with pride and rightfully proclaim a victory for reparations,” Lanier said after the victory on Wednesday. “This pilfered property, images taken without dignity or consent and used to promote a racist pseudoscience will now be repatriated to a home where their stories can be told and their humanity can be restored.”

In a statement to the AP, a Harvard representative said the university was “eager” to transfer the daguerreotypes to another museum. The statement also said that the battle with Lanier was “complex” because the institution couldn’t confirm her connection to the images’ subjects.

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents Lanier, told CBS News that she and Harvard also reached an undisclosed monetary settlement.

“This case is so precedent-setting in so many ways,” Crump told the Times. “It does leave a bright trail for not just us but the next generation of civil rights lawyers to take up the cross and to continue to defend Black humanity on every level.”

ICYMI

• The U.S. Naval Academy has returned nearly all of the 381 books related to race and gender, including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, to its library shelves after a Pentagon-ordered review. Twenty books are still under review amidst the anti-DEI policy whiplash.

• Congrats are in order for Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence’s kids! Eric Murphy and Jasmin Lawrence recently got married in a low-key ceremony, making the comedians in-laws.

• Michael Sumler of the funk band Kool & the Gang died at 71 in a car crash in Georgia.

• Philadelphia honored “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson with the key to the city and a mural at her alma mater that inspired the show.

• Clarksdale, Miss., got its “Sinners” screening after native Tyler Yarbrough created a petition and open letter to Ryan Coogler and the film’s cast and crew.