A pregnant woman in Georgia who has been declared brain dead is at the center of an ethical controversy, as she remains on life support until her preborn son can be delivered. The media has been quick to blame the state’s pro-life ‘heartbeat law’ for the situation, but an entirely different state law — one that came into being 15 years before the state’s pro-life law — is the more likely principle at play.
Three months ago, Adriana Smith was nine weeks pregnant. She went to the hospital with a severe headache, was given pain medication, and was sent home. The next morning, her boyfriend awoke to her gasping for air and making gurgling sounds. Smith was rushed to Emory Decatur before being transferred to Emory University Hospital — where she had worked as a nurse. A CT scan revealed multiple blood clots in her brain.
“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” said Smith’s mother, April Newkirk. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”
Smith was tragically declared brain dead. She was moved to Emory University Hospital Midtown, where she has been on a ventilator for more than 90 days as doctors work to ensure her baby reaches an age when he has a stronger chance of survival before he is delivered and Smith’s life support is removed. According to media reports, the goal is to keep Smith on life support until her son reaches 32 weeks gestation — for another 11 weeks.
AT A GLANCE:
- Removing a pregnant woman from life support does not constitute an “abortion” as defined by the Georgia LIFE Act, currently being blamed by the media.
- Due to the Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care Act of 2007, removing a pregnant woman from life support is not legal in Georgia — unless her preborn child isn’t viable and she additionally has an advance directive that states her wishes to be withdrawn from life-sustaining measures. Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land when this act passed.
- It does not appear that Smith had an advance directive in place.
Blaming the pro-life law
As soon as Smith’s story became public, media outlets began pointing fingers at Georgia’s pro-life law, the 2019 Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, which went into effect in 2022. Abortion supporters have expressed anger that Smith has not been removed from life support, and are likewise blaming the state’s pro-life law — despite their complete lack of knowledge regarding what Smith would want for herself or her child.
As one commenter noted on a Facebook post by Secular Pro-Life regarding the case, “[Smith] knew she was pregnant and chose not to abort, so why would even those who are ‘pro-choice’ be fighting so hard to go against the mother’s choice to give birth if possible?”
Georgia’s LIFE Act defines abortion as “the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy with knowledge that termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of an unborn child…” Removing Smith from life support does not fit the LIFE Act’s definition of abortion — an act done with the purpose of terminating a woman’s pregnancy to cause the preborn child’s death. The purpose of removing artificial life support from a pregnant woman declared brain dead would not be to “terminate a pregnancy,” and removing that support also does the opposite of “using, prescribing, or administering” anything whatsoever to that woman.
The fact that the LIFE Act clearly doesn’t even apply here hasn’t stopped the media from claiming that it does.
However, there is a law that does apply: Georgia’s law regarding life support — the Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care Act, in effect since 2007, 15 years prior to Georgia’s LIFE Act — is what’s more likely at play here. As Secular Pro-Life pointed out on Facebook:
GA Code § 31-32-9 from 2007, 15 years prior to the enactment of Georgia pro-life law, states that doctors can’t withdraw life support from pregnant patients unless both (1) the fetus isn’t viable and (2) the patient had an advance[] directive explicitly stating she wanted withdrawal of life-sustaining measures.
Both of these requirements of the law must be met to allow the withdrawal of Smith’s life support.
Had Smith had an advance directive in place specifying her desire for no life-sustaining measures, doctors would have been legally allowed to remove her life support, since her child was nine weeks gestation and had not reached typical gestational age for “viability” (ability to survive outside the womb).
In this case, when Smith was first put on life support, her baby was not old enough to have been able to survive a premature birth. But he is now 21 weeks, and babies born at this gestational age have survived in some cases with medical intervention. His chances of survival would increase to 95% if he is allowed to remain in the womb until 32 weeks.
Even before the 2007 law, in 1987 — while abortion was legal in Georgia under Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton — the Georgia Supreme Court ruled on the case of Donna Piazzi, who was declared brain dead and in the second trimester of pregnancy — as Smith is now. Her husband wanted her life support ended, but the guardian ad litem and putative father of the preborn baby did not. The Court ruled that, based on case law and Georgia statutes, only the mother of a preborn child has a right to abort a “quickened, nonviable fetus.” It said that “public policy requires the maintenance of life support systems for a brain dead mother as long as there exists a reasonable possibility that the fetus may develop and survive.”
Despite unknowns about the health of Smith’s preborn son, research supports the possibility that he may survive if allowed to remain in the womb long enough.
Christina Bennett, news correspondent for Live Action, explained, “In this very tragic situation, the most humane thing that you can do with the possibility of one life that may be lost is try to save another life.”
What Smith’s family wants
The headlines surrounding Smith’s case imply that everyone wants Smith disconnected from life support — the doctors and her family. This, along with blaming the LIFE Act, is misleading.
Newsweek’s headline claimed, “Abortion Law Forces Doctors to Keep Pregnant Brain Dead Woman Alive,” and the Independent‘s headline read, “Brain-dead Georgia woman put on life support for 3 months to carry fetus to birth because of abortion ban against her family’s wishes.” People claimed, “Mother Forced to Keep Pregnant Daughter Alive After She’s Declared Brain Dead Due to Abortion Ban: ‘It’s Torture,'” and NBC claimed, “Georgia mother says she is being forced to keep brain-dead pregnant daughter alive under abortion ban law.”
Yet, none of these media outlets appear to have spoken with Smith’s doctors — there isn’t a single quote from any of them. As for Smith’s family, there are no quotes from her baby’s father, and her mother does not appear to have directly stated that she wants her daughter’s life support removed. The only news outlet Newkirk appears to have spoken to at this point is the local 11 Alive (WXIA).
Newkirk told 11 Alive, “It’s torture for me. I come here, and I see my daughter breathing on a ventilator, but she’s not there.” She added, “I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision, and if not, then their partner or their parents,” Newkirk said. “I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy, but what I’m saying is we should have had a choice” (emphasis added).
Newkirk did not state that she would choose to turn off life support and end her grandson’s life. She only said she would have liked to have the opportunity to decide. Again, the baby’s father does not appear to have been interviewed, and his name is currently not published in any news outlet.
Newkirk is also concerned because doctors reportedly detected fluid on Smith’s son’s brain. “… [M]y grandson may be blind, may not be able to walk, wheelchair-bound. We don’t know if he’ll live once she has him. It should have been left up to the family,” she said, noting that they are concerned about medical bills as well as “what kind of life” Smith’s son will have, as Newkirk stated that they, as the grandparents, would be “the ones raising him” instead of the child’s father.
While these fears are understandable, this ableist sort of language seems to imply that if a child is blind or cannot walk, that child is better off dead. Families must be made aware of help and resources available to them.
The media has again sought to advance its pro-abortion agenda with a tragic story of a death that should have been prevented with proper medical examinations and testing. Some might say it is miraculous that Smith’s baby survived at all.
As Secular Pro-Life stated in the group’s Facebook post, the anger over this situation is “a testament to how very little abortion advocates value unborn children, that even in a case where the woman (1) cannot be harmed by continuing the pregnancy and (2) may very well have wanted her child to live, the framing is outrage that her son’s life is prioritized.”
Smith wasn’t an “incubator” for her son before this tragedy occurred, and she isn’t a mere “incubator” for him now, though some have applied the term in this instance. It is dehumanizing — both to Smith and to the child in her womb.
