Even in death, we are still enslaved.
In February 2025, Adriana Smith, nine-weeks pregnant at the time, staggered into a local hospital complaining of an intense headache. She was turned away.
The very next morning, after waking up to Adriana gasping for air, her boyfriend frantically called 911 and Adriana was rushed to the hospital. Shortly upon arrival, blood clots were found in her brain, and she was declared brain dead.
Due to Georgia’s anti-abortion laws, which prohibit abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, the hospital refused to release Adriana’s body to her family. Despite the death of Adriana, her body was forced to carry out the pregnancy. Despite the pleas of her family, Adriana’s body was hooked up to a machine that sustained the biological function of the body while nutrients were pumped into it. It would remain in this state for four months.
On June 17, 2025, the body that was previously Adriana Smith was limp and unresponsive as a team of nurses pried a baby from inside. Four days later, the body was unplugged and discarded.
The medical system has always been hostile to African women
The cold, inhumane treatment of Adriana and the desecration of her body are not an anomaly. It is representative of a historical relationship between African women and this system that has made it so that cold inhumanity is all African women can expect to receive when dealing with these hospitals.
This is because African women, like African men, live under colonial domination. Colonialism is a situation where one group of people dominates another to secure political, social and economic benefits at their expense. Through this process, the colonizer nation enriches itself while the colonized nation is impoverished.
This is how Europe gained all of its wealth and resources—at the expense of Africa. In order for this relationship to remain, African people have to be kept in a state of brutal oppression and exploitation.
That relationship is expressed in all facets of society. It is expressed by the colonial medical system through its regular deceptive, neglectful and abusive treatment of African women.
A 2022 Pew Research Center study found that 63 percent of black women reported that they’d experienced being judged, ignored or received poor care from their doctor. This is why Adriana was turned away when she approached the hospital with a serious health concern. This is why if you were to ask an African woman to tell you about a time when she felt disrespected and dismissed by a doctor, she’ll give you five or more times.
When it comes to African women and this medical system, mistreatment is standard treatment; and this couldn’t be made more clear than the fact that African women are 53 percent more likely to die during childbirth than white women.
Much of the discussion in the wake of Adriana’s murder has been about abortion laws and “a woman’s right to choose,” but this situation cannot be reduced to simply a discussion of abortion rights when African women themselves run the risk of being aborted at these hospitals. What is also lost in this discussion is the fact that regardless of current Georgia abortion laws, African women have never, ever controlled their wombs under this social system.
The African wombs has always been under the control of colonialism
There hasn’t been a moment in the past 600 years where African women have had complete autonomy over their wombs and when, how or where they will have babies. Colonialism was established through the European enslavement of African women and men and control of when, where, how many and with whom they will reproduce.
African women’s wombs themselves became enslaved through this process. During the days of slavery, the average enslaved African woman would give birth to eight children in her lifetime. This wasn’t due to some unique love of childbirth on the part of African women; this was due to the demands of the slave master, of the colonizer, of white power—the power of the white ruling class and all institutions which work in its interest.
Regardless of her plans for childbirth, or whether she even wanted to give birth at all, African women were forced to pump out as many babies as necessary to grow up and slave for massa’s plantation. The African woman’s womb was not her own.
In fact, as an act of resistance, African women at times would sabotage their own pregnancies, inducing their own crude, unsafe abortions. Her very life would be at risk (whether dying from the procedure or being killed by the slave master for denying him the birth of another enslaved African), but it was determined a necessary sacrifice in order to spare her child a cold, brutal existence on the plantation.
The decision to have children or not was not based on her own interests and desires. These were the options: to birth a child for the slave master or not to birth a child because of the slave master. Her womb was under the dominion of white power.
Today, African women still fight to be able to make their own decisions about children in a social system that has often made the decision for them. Every day, African women who want to have a child have to deal with questions like “I’d like to have a child one day, but how will I ever afford a child?” or “I’m pregnant, and there is no way that I can afford this child. What do I do now?” “How will I clothe, house and feed this child? Should I even have a child?”
You’ll have African women see #LongLiveMikeBrown and photos of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin on t-shirts and wonder what the fate of her African child might be one day.
“Should I even have a child? Should I have a child, and, immediately upon birth, condemn him to a world that has demonstrated itself to be hostile to black children?”
The food might kill him, the hospital might kill him, the police might kill him, and, if he’s lucky, he’ll get to live a long life as an oppressed African man, slaving for this system. In the face of this reality, some African women may opt out of having children altogether.
In the face of this reality, some African women may terminate a pregnancy—not because they don’t want to have a child, but because this system doesn’t want them to have a child. Conditions of colonialism make it nearly impossible to provide our children everything they need for a thriving, fulfilling life. The questions of whether to have children, whether to terminate a pregnancy, whether to give birth and, once they do come into this world, what will become of them are all uncertainties of life for African people under colonial domination. It is these uncertainties that play a guiding role in determining our decision to have children.
African women are still not able to make the decision to have children or not have children from an empowered position. Just like back on the plantation, the decision is made primarily by white power. Our babies are birthed for white power and the decsion to get rid of our babies, through abortion, adoption or otherwise, is because of white power.
For our children, colonialism begins at conception. And whether they will live long lives, healthy lives, short lives or even be born at all is determined by living conditions forced on our people by a foreign and hostile power.
Colonialism must be aborted
The African woman’s womb is still not her own, but the reality is that nothing is yours under colonialism. Not even your body is yours. Whether on the hospital bed or in our day-to-day lives, we are forced to labor and produce for this system.
The only way we reclaim full agency over our bodies is by putting an end to colonialism. The only way we guarantee a life for our children is by overturning the system that has brought many forms of death to our children.
Colonialism must go. The system that killed Adriana Smith must go. This is how we gain the power to produce children on our terms and bring them into a world where they will prosper and flourish.
Since its inception, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) has committed itself to the “… destruction of the special oppression of women and the elevation of women to the rightful place as equal partners and leaders in the forward motion of the development of human society and as leaders, makers, and shapers of human history” (Point 9 of the APSP Platform).
This commitment has been expressed through the establishment of the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) which leads the charge of overturning the special oppression of African women. We must build ANWO. We must take the power back from the slave master, back from the plantation, and back from this entire social system and place genuine, self-determining, world-transforming power back into the hands of African women.
Long Live Adriana Smith!
Join ANWO!
African Women Must Lead!
Take the Power Back!
