Adriana Smith was 31. A registered nurse. A mother. She had plans, a life, and a 7-year-old son who now asks why his mom is “just sleeping.”
On February 19, she was declared brain-dead after suffering multiple blood clots in her brain. She was also nine weeks pregnant—and because of that, Georgia law wouldn’t allow doctors to take her off life support.
Nearly four months later, on June 13, her body—kept alive by machines—delivered a 1-pound baby boy named Chance via emergency C-section. Her family plans to remove her from life support today.
“I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there,” her mother, April Newkirk, said. “It’s torture.”
Adriana Smith’s Story Is a Post-Roe Reality
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Georgia enacted a near-total abortion ban. Under the LIFE Act, abortions are illegal after about six weeks—before many people even know they’re pregnant. Exceptions exist only for narrowly defined emergencies. But Adriana’s case? A legal gray zone. Or a legal trap.
Because she was brain-dead, doctors reportedly told her family she was no longer considered “at risk” herself. That meant—under law—they were required to keep her body functioning until the fetus reached viability.
Let’s be clear: Adriana Smith had died. But the state no longer saw her as a person—it saw her as a uterus still capable of producing a birth.
See also: Life-Threatening Pregnancy? Trump’s Emergency Abortion Ban Puts Pregnant Patients at Risk
The System Took Over
Smith’s mother was left begging for options. The family didn’t even know if they would have chosen to terminate the pregnancy. But no one gave them that choice. The decision was made for them—by lawmakers who never met Adriana and never had to look her child in the eyes.
“She’s pregnant with my grandson,” Newkirk said, through tears. “But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born… We’re going to be the ones raising him.”
Georgia state officials now claim nothing in the LIFE Act requires doctors to keep brain-dead women on life support. But state Senator Ed Setzler, the architect of the law, defended the hospital’s actions, calling them “appropriate” and saying it “highlights the value of innocent human life.”
The value of Adriana’s life—cut short, mechanized, and treated as a state-regulated incubator—was apparently not part of the calculation.
See also: Pope Leo XIV Surprises with Conservative Views on Marriage and Abortion in First Address
A Family Left in the Aftermath
Adriana’s baby, Chance, remains in the NICU. Doctors say he’s expected to survive, but the risks are real. He was born at just over 1 lb., and his long-term prognosis is unknown.
His big brother will grow up knowing the state kept his mother’s body alive for months after she died. That her pregnancy mattered more than her personhood. That she was, in effect, turned into a means to an end.
Adriana Smith never got to make a decision about her body. Her family wasn’t allowed to make it either. That is not medicine. That is not ethics. That is not care.
That is control.
See also: When Choice Ends: How Abortion Bans Impact Black, Hispanic, and Low-Income Women
