Pregnant, brain-dead Georgia woman kept alive due to state abortion ban
By: Global News
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Pregnant, brain-dead Georgia woman kept alive due to state abortion ban
Exteriors of Emory University Hospital on February 4, 2015. John E. Davidson / Getty Images
A medically brain-dead pregnant woman in the U.S. state of Georgia is being kept alive on a ventilator until her baby can be born because removing the patient's life support would constitute an illegal abortion based on state laws.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old mother and nurse, has been in a vegetative state since February. However, doctors are unable to humanely end her life due to Georgia's strict anti-abortion legislation, which came into effect after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Though legally dead, Smith will likely remain on life support for months until her baby can be safely delivered.
Smith's mother, April Newkirk, told Atlanta news station WXIA in February that her daughter had been experiencing intense headaches, and was admitted to Northside Hospital more than three months earlier, but was released after receiving medication.
The morning after being released, Smith's boyfriend woke up to her gasping for air and called the emergency services. Medical staff at Emory University Hospital determined she had blood clots in her brain and declared her brain dead.
Newkirk said Smith is now 21 weeks pregnant. A full-term pregnancy is anywhere between 39 weeks to 40 weeks and six days, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and removing her breathing tubes and other life-saving supports would likely kill the fetus.
Neither hospital can comment on her case because of confidentiality laws, but Emory released a statement saying 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."
"Our top priorities continue to be the safety and well-being of the patients we serve," it concluded.
According to Smith's family, her doctors said they are unable to switch off the machines keeping her alive because Georgia's abortion laws forbid abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the fetus.
The law was adopted in 2019 but came into effect in 2022, which paved the way for state-specific abortion bans. Currently, there are 12 states banning abortion at all stages of pregnancy, and three, including Georgia, prohibit it after about six weeks.
Georgia's Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act permits abortions if the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother's life. An abortion is also allowed if the pregnancy is medically futile or the result of rape or incest, in which case it can be aborted up to 20 weeks of gestation — but both of these situations require a police report.
Smith's family, including her five-year-old son, visits her in the hospital regularly, but Newkirk told WXIA that the fetus has fluid around its brain and that they are concerned for its health.
"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 local outlet.
Monica Simpson, the executive director of the organization SisterSong, the primary plaintiff in a legal challenge to the state's abortion ban, told the Guardian that Smith's situation also raises issues over her family's right to make decisions about her medical care.
"Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions," Simpson said. "Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatization, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing."
Currently, the plan is to keep Smith on life support until the child can survive outside the womb; they are considered "viable" from about 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The administrator of this group reserves the right, along with the site moderators, to moderate all and any postings to this group, including the right to enforce the ToS, the CoC, and also including anything that the administrator deems within his sole discretion to be offensive, including and not limited to off topic or 'no value' comments, with the power to delete in exercising those rights.
It would be best, therefore, to be civil in posting on this group.
By now it should be well known that I am unable to open certain sources, videos and pictures. If I cannot, I will ask that they be described and explained. If the poster refuses to comply, their comment will be deleted. Instagrams are banned.
Tags
Who is online
90 visitors
"American Torture", brought to you by the Supreme Court of the United States, America's Star Chamber.
Brain dead and pregnant...I have so many questions.
One question that you need not ask about is that she has been pregnant for about 5 months and brain dead for about 3 months.
Valid question to ask in some hollars considering the opposite could be true in some backwoods conservative counties, those same places where they strip women of their rights over their own bodies.
Who has to pay for this?
Hopefully, the state that is forcing it to happen.
But that means the taxpayers. Which is fair enough, I suppose, considering that they voted for politicians who put this law in place.
I hope it's not the family. Being forced to keep her "alive" as an incubator could financially cripple them for life.
Unless someone is able to sneak in and pull the plugs like Clint Eastwood did to Hillary Swank in the movie Millionaire Baby, they're in it for the long haul. What a sick shame.
There is no indication as to whether or not there was insurance that would cover this, so unless, as Sandy says, the State comes up with it, or the hospital doesn't charge (not likely that will be the case) then for sure the family is forced to pay for months to maintain the life of a person who has the brain of a potato.
It is situations such as this that are making me consider having DNR tattooed on my wrist.
it is a very controversial subject between myself and one of my daughters.
It wouldn't have made a difference in this case. The DNR wouldn't have been honored, because pregnant women, as this case illustrates clearly, have fewer rights than dead people in some states.
The only thing that could have prevented this was for her boyfriend to have refrained from calling 911 and watched her die in front of him. I hope I can say that I don't know anybody who would do such a thing. No humane person would, and certainly a person who loves this woman and is presumably looking forward to the birth of their mutual child would do everything he could to save her life. He had no way of knowing she'd be brain-dead and kept warm by machines, so he called, as any of us would.
Family values...
The children of comatose/brain dead mothers are generally not born healthy (if alive at all). Hopefully the state will be there to care for it if this is the case here
I would invite the Georgia lawmakers who passed that damned law to spend some time in the top floor ward of Toronto's Sick Children's Hospital where they keep the "monsters" that were born in situations like that, let them care for those kids for a while to see what THEY have created. It wouldn't be for long, cause those kids die very soon, especially if they're born without a mouth.
That's something they don't want to admit happens. Children born without mouths. Without functioning kidneys. Without brains, or with incompletely formed ones. They have no real chance at a meaningful life, and some are in pain during the time they survive (I won't say live).
Biology is messy sometimes.