Charts Unwritten

In March 2025, public health in the United States is not simply shifting—it’s recalibrating in ways that feel eerily familiar to anyone who has ever read The Handmaid’s Tale. The election of a new federal administration in the U.S. has brought renewed pressure on reproductive health policy, with a surge of legislative proposals quietly advancing in several states. But it wasn’t until I read the story of a brain-dead woman in Georgia—kept on life support against her family’s wishes because she was pregnant—that something in me cracked.

This isn’t fiction. This is policy. This is medicine under siege.

The Case That Shouldn’t Be Real

In early 2025, media outlets reported on a woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead—a legal and clinical determination of death. But because she was pregnant, her body was kept on artificial life support. The hospital cited a state law barring withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant person, even if that person is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Let me repeat: a legally deceased woman’s body was turned into an incubator because of a law.

Her family was forced to watch as ventilators breathed for a lifeless body. Her spouse and loved ones, still reeling from the trauma of her sudden collapse and the weight of their grief, were told their wishes no longer mattered. Their wife, daughter, sister—gone. But not “legally enough” to be released from the hospital. Not “medically neutral” enough to be mourned in peace.

It is hard to describe the level of harm this causes. It’s not just reproductive coercion—it’s posthumous violence.

Echoes from Gilead

In The Handmaid’s Tale, author Margaret Atwood imagines a dystopian society where women’s bodies are reduced to vessels of reproduction. Autonomy is not just revoked—it’s criminalized. Though the book is fiction, Atwood has said that every practice depicted in the story is based on real historical precedent.

What happened in Georgia is not a glitch in the system. It’s the system working exactly as it was designed to—prioritizing potential life over living people. Over agency. Over ethics. Over grief.

In Gilead, a woman’s body is not hers. It is property of the state, useful only so long as it produces. In Georgia, a woman’s body is being treated the same. Her death was not enough to grant release.

And when policy treats the body as property, public health becomes a weapon, not a shield.

The Larger Trend: Public Health in a Backslide

Under the new federal administration, we’re seeing three dangerous trends emerge in public health:

• Reproductive Health Criminalization
  • States are increasingly emboldened to pass extreme fetal personhood laws that affect everything from miscarriage care to end-of-life decisions. Even patients experiencing ectopic pregnancies or incomplete miscarriages face legal scrutiny and care delays. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was not the end. It was the spark.
• Data Policing and Surveillance
  • Several states have introduced proposals to monitor reproductive outcomes via digital health records. This includes tracking miscarriages, abortion-related care, and even patient “non-compliance.” The idea that your EMR could be used to prosecute your OB/GYN is no longer hypothetical.
• Erosion of Trust in Providers
  • As these laws grow more aggressive, patients are increasingly afraid to seek care—especially those from marginalized communities. Providers, in turn, must choose between legal protection and ethical practice. The result? Fewer people trust that healthcare will keep them safe.

Public health is supposed to be built on prevention, safety, and equitable access. But the current direction feels more like a containment strategy—one that controls the body rather than serves it.

Trauma-Informed Care in a Politicized Climate

As a Crisis Volunteer Advocate, I’ve sat beside survivors grappling with the trauma of bodily violation. I’ve seen what happens when control is stripped away—when people feel reduced to what happened to them instead of seen for who they are. Thats why the Georgia case struck me so deeply because it reminded me of those moments. Not just of trauma, but of being silenced.

Trauma-informed care begins with agency. And agency starts with consent—whether someone is undergoing an exam, a treatment plan, or the act of dying.

In trauma-informed settings, death is not weaponized. Patients are not politicized. Families are not erased from decision-making. And grief is not suspended for nine months because a uterus remains active after the brain no longer functions.

We are not meant to practice medicine on corpses. We are not meant to fight families for legal custody of a heartbeat. If public health cannot draw this line, who will?

Who Is Most at Risk?

It’s no surprise that laws like these disproportionately affect:

• Black and Brown women, who already face maternal mortality rates 3–4x higher than white women.
• Low-income patients, who rely on public hospitals bound by state statutes.
• Immigrants and people with limited English proficiency, who may not understand or be informed of their rights in complex legal-medical scenarios.

The impact goes beyond any one case. It signals to these communities that their pain will be secondary to politics. That their bodies are conditional. That their autonomy is negotiable.

It’s chilling. And yet, it’s sadly our reality.

What Can Be Done?

You might ask: What can I do? What can we do, in a system that feels this broken?

Here’s where advocacy re-enters the conversation:

• Speak up—even if you’re not in medicine. Talk about these cases. Write about them. Challenge narratives that call this “pro-life” when it is clearly anti-living.
• Support providers who resist. There are brave clinicians who continue to practice with integrity. Many face surveillance, threats, and legal jeopardy. They need community, protection, and amplification.
• Demand clearer medical-legal guidance. Policies must be rewritten to protect the rights of both patients and providers. No healthcare worker should have to delay care out of fear of breaking the law.
• Center the families. We must reframe public health around human dignity. The loved ones of the Georgia woman deserved better. They deserved to grieve.

Closing Reflection

Sometimes, public health is loud—marches, lawsuits, protests. But sometimes, it’s heartbreakingly quiet. A family holding vigil in an ICU. A ventilator humming for a body that has already left. A daughter being treated like a vessel, not a person.

This March, I’m reflecting on that silence. On the chilling fact that for some, death is not enough to reclaim their body from the state.

But I also reflect on resistance. Not just in the streets, but in our care rooms. In trauma-informed spaces. In how we talk about medicine. In how we name harm.

Because we must name it. Clearly. Without euphemism.

And we must remember: What we tolerate quietly, becomes the new policy norm.

Resources & Further Reading

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• NIH: Trauma-Informed Care in Health Care Settings
• Center for Reproductive Rights – Current State Abortion Laws
• Black Mamas Matter Alliance

— Advocate in Scrubs