Brain dead Georgia woman forced to stay on life support because she was pregnant gives birth to baby boy with a heartbreaking name
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A brain dead Georgia woman who was kept alive via life support because she was pregnant has now given birth via C-section.
Atlanta nurse Adriana Smith, 30, was declared brain dead in February, when she was eight weeks pregnant, but due to the state’s strict anti-abortion laws her medical team kept her artificially alive in an effort to save the fetus.
Smith’s mother April Newkirk said the baby, a little boy named Chance, arrived prematurely on Friday, June 13 by emergency Cesarean section.
He weighs about one pound and 13 ounces, and is in the NICU. Newkirk said the name Chance seemed fitting ‘because I feel like he had a second chance at life.’
He was born at around 26 weeks – three months early. Doctors had hoped to perform the c-section birth closer to August to give him the best chance at survival.
‘He’s expected to be OK,’ Newkirk told 11 Alive. ‘He’s just fighting. We just want prayers for him. Just keep praying for him. He’s here now.’
Smith will now be taken off life support.
She was hospitalized in early February for intense headaches, and doctors found multiple blood clots in her brain, according to her family.
Atlanta nurse Adriana Smith, 30, was declared brain dead in February, when she was eight weeks pregnant, but due to the state’s strict anti-abortion laws her medical team kept her artificially alive in an effort to save the fetus
Doctors reportedly attempted surgery to relieve the pressure, but Smith was left brain-dead after the operation.
Georgia passed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act in 2019, ruling medical professionals can’t perform an abortion if a heartbeat is detected.
The law, which did not come into effect until three years later when Roe v Wade was overturned, cited two exceptions in the case of a medical emergency or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.
A medical emergency is defined in the law as an event where the abortion was necessary to save a mother’s life or ‘the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.’
Abortions can also be performed if a medical professional believes that the child would be born with a ‘chromosomal anomaly’ where the baby would die after birth.
Smith’s case represents a complicated part of the law because an abortion wouldn’t save her life, and a heartbeat was already detected in her unborn baby.
Newkirk previously expressed the family should have had the choice to terminate Smith’s pregnancy.
‘She’s pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born,’ she told WXIA.
Adriana Smith, 30, a mother and a nurse, was being kept alive after she was declared brain dead due to Georgia’s heartbeat bill
Smith’s mother said it was ‘torture’ seeing her in the hospital every day
‘This decision should’ve been left to us. Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have—and we’re going to be the ones raising him.’
Newkirk also said she was worried about paying the mounting hospital bills, telling the outlet, ‘Every day that goes by, it’s more cost, more trauma, more questions.’
The state’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, released a statement amid outrage over the case declaring the law does not require doctors to keep brain-dead patients alive, because turning off the life support ‘is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, 41 states have issued abortion restrictions, including 12 that have total bans. The 1973 case had established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
