A Crisis in Plain Sight: Abortion Bans and Rising Risks for Black Women in the Southeast
Georgia and Florida
In the years since the Dobbs decision overturned federal protections for abortion, consequences have spread not just to courtrooms and state legislatures, but to emergency rooms, jail cells, and labor and delivery units — especially in the South. Many anti-abortion opponents and lawmakers frame abortion bans as moral victories rooted in faith and a commitment to “protecting life.” But for Black women like me, the lived reality tells a different story: one where policy, inequity, and selective moral concern collide with devastating, deadly consequences.
Abortion Bans in Georgia
In Georgia, that reality is particularly stark. The state’s six-week abortion ban — which occurs before many people even know they are pregnant — meets an already fragile healthcare system and a longstanding Black maternal health crisis. The result is not theoretical. It is measurable and increasingly deadly.
From a reproductive justice perspective, a framework developed by Black women and championed by organizations like SisterSong, the issue is not simply whether abortion is legal. It is whether people have the power, resources, and dignity to make autonomous decisions about their bodies and families. By that measure, the South is failing.
Consider the case of Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black nurse who was declared brain-dead while nine weeks pregnant. Doctors kept her on life support for months, citing concerns about violating Georgia’s abortion ban. Her body and pregnancy were sustained not by consent, but by a legal interpretation that raises profound questions about autonomy, dignity, and what it means to respect life. Adriana’s story is extreme, but it is not isolated.
In a landmark investigation, ProPublica found that abortion bans are already reshaping how doctors respond to emergencies. In the case of Amber Thurman, a Black mother in Georgia who died after seeking emergency care that could have saved her life, medical experts emphasized that “the standard of care is to act quickly.” Yet, doctors delayed Amber’s care amid legal uncertainty. Amber died of septic shock. Her death was later deemed preventable by the state’s own maternal mortality review committee — after which all members of the committee were dismissed. The committee has since relaunched, but state officials will not reveal the members’ identities.
Then there’s Candi Miller, another Black mother in Georgia who died because the state failed to prioritize life-saving care over politics. After learning of an unintended pregnancy, Candi self-managed her abortion, but did not expel all fetal tissue and needed a D&C procedure. However, due to the state’s near-total abortion ban and fearing legal consequences, Candi did not seek treatment. That fear of prosecution, surveillance, and being judged created avoidable barriers that kept her from the very system that should have saved her life. And make no mistake: Georgia’s abortion ban caused her death, too.
Exacerbating a Crisis
These are not isolated tragedies. These are the predictable consequences of policies that restrict care while amplifying fear and punishment. And Black women bear the brunt of this reality.
We are already three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, because of racial trauma, heightened stress and fear, Black women produce 15% more cortisol than white women, making pregnancy complications even more likely. And research from the National Partnership for Women & Families shows that Black women are disproportionately concentrated in states with the most restrictive abortion laws, particularly across the South, while also facing higher rates of uninsurance, provider shortages, and economic barriers to care.
Black women are also more likely to experience unintended pregnancies, not because of individual choices, but due to systemic inequities in access to contraception, healthcare, and economic opportunity. In this context, abortion bans do not operate in a vacuum, but rather, they compound risk. Abortion bans force Black women into a healthcare system where we are already far more likely to experience complications or die from pregnancy-related causes, turning existing disparities into deadly ones.
When abortion bans force people to carry pregnancies to term or delay emergency care, they intensify an already dangerous reality. But the impact of these laws extends beyond abortion. Increasingly, bans are reshaping how pregnancy itself is governed.
Abortion Bans in Florida
In Georgia, cases involving pregnancy loss have already drawn scrutiny from law enforcement. The recent arrest of a Black woman charged with murder after allegedly taking abortion pills signals a broader shift toward criminalization. Pregnancy outcomes are no longer treated solely as medical events, but as potential evidence. Not to mention, it is not legal to prosecute abortion patients under current Georgia law. SHAME. This kind of indictment creates fear, and fear changes behavior, delays care, silences symptoms, and increases risk. Nowhere is the expansion of state control more visible than in my home state of Florida.
In a recent investigation, ProPublica documented how courts have intervened directly in childbirth decisions, ordering pregnant women to undergo cesarean sections against their will. Cherise Doyley, a Black doula in Florida, was in active labor when hospital staff brought a video call via tablet to her bedside so she could appeal before a judge. She had no lawyer and no time to prepare. The state had filed an emergency petition to override her refusal of a C-section. WTF?
Doyley had previously undergone three C-sections, including one that resulted in a hemorrhage. She made it clear that she did not want another. Doyley expressed that C-sections are inherently risky, citing “medical negligence and medical racism, where we have a group of white doctors that think that they know what is best for Black bodies and Black babies.”
Despite Doyley’s pleas, the decision was no longer hers. In the virtual hearing, she looked at a screen filled with medical professionals and legal authorities, most of them white, and said, “I have 20 white people against me, trying to take my rights away by force.”
A year earlier, Brianna Bennett, another Black woman in Florida, faced a nearly identical situation. After more than 24 hours of labor, she refused a C-section, citing the physical toll of her previous surgeries and her responsibility to care for her family. Still, the hospital sought court intervention. Within minutes, her hospital room became a courtroom. Brianna asked a question that cuts to the heart of the issue: “Are any of you gonna help me bathe or shower, lift the baby, because I can’t lift my legs?”
The judge ordered the surgery anyway. Noticing the trend here?
ProPublica’s reporting makes clear that pregnancy is treated as a condition in which courts can compel medical treatment against a patient’s will. Together, these cases reveal a troubling pattern: a system in which the state asserts increasing authority over the bodies of pregnant people, often in ways that disproportionately impact Black women. This trend mirrors a policy agenda that prioritizes fetuses over pregnant people, enabling forced pregnancy and deepening existing racial and health inequities.
A Moral Reckoning
Dignity is not conditional. It does not disappear during pregnancy, and it cannot be selectively applied. A moral framework that values life must value the life, lived experience, agency, and safety of the pregnant person.
Yet across the South, the structural context only deepens this crisis. Hospital closures, provider shortages, and economic inequity make access to care more difficult, especially for Black women. Before Roe was overturned, Black women already accounted for a disproportionate share of abortion patients in Southern states, reflecting systemic inequities, not individual failings.
As if abortion bans are not extreme enough, lawmakers took it a step further last year with the Big Ugly Bill that defunded Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations that receive more than $800,000 in Medicaid dollars and provide abortions. 31% of Medicaid recipients are Black women, and according to a KFF health tracking data poll, 45% of Black women have visited a Planned Parenthood at least once. I can’t help but wonder how noncoincidental that is and how many more Black women will die or be harmed by the ever-growing list of barriers to reproductive care.
Supporters of these laws often argue that bans apply equally to everyone. But equality in language does not translate to equity in impact. When policies intersect with structural racism and economic inequality, they produce unequal outcomes, predictably and repeatedly. What is unfolding in Georgia, Florida, and across the Southeast is not just a policy shift: It is a moral crisis. And it demands a response grounded in truth.
For those of us rooted in faith, this is a moment of moral reckoning. Both the Black church tradition and Catholic social teaching call us to center the dignity of every person and to stand with those most vulnerable to harm. So, we say their names. We honor Cherise Doyley and Brianna Bennett, whose stories remind us that the reach of these policies extends far beyond abortion alone. We pray for peace and remembrance of Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, and Adriana Smith.
To say their names is to tell the truth about what is happening in our communities. It is to reject silence and to insist that their lives carry moral weight. If we are to be consistent in our values, we cannot claim to protect life while ignoring the conditions that endanger it. True moral leadership requires more than intention; it requires the courage to confront harm, to choose compassion over control, and to protect life in all its fullness.