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June 19, 2025
Tuesday, doctors in Georgia removed the body of Adrianna Smith from life support. Smith’s situation made the news earlier this year when she became brain-dead and the state of Georgia demanded that she be kept on life support on the grounds that she was pregnant.
Smith, then 30, went to a doctor complianing of headaches in February. The doctor prescribed her medicine and sent her home. The next day, her boyfriend woke up to find her struggling to breathe and making strange sounds. She was taken to Emory University Hospital, where she was diagnosed with blood clots and pronounced braindead. At the time, she was eight weeks pregant. Georgia law bans almost all abortions after six weeks.
“I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told a local news agency. “But I’m saying we should have had a choice.” Newkirk continued to express this sentiment in June.
Authorities in Georgia interpreted the state’s strict limits on abortion to prohibit doctors from removing the ventilator that kept Smith’s blood oxygenated. Kara Murray of the state Attorney General’s Office said in May that the law did not require patients to remain on ventialtors after brain death, but state senator Ed Setzler, a Republican, said “I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child. I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life.” The hospital refused to comment on confidentiality grounds.
According to Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, Smith’s son, named Chance, was delivered by emergency C-section on Friday. He weighed 1 pound 13 ounces at birth and has since been treated at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.
Georgia put a law in place banning almost all abortions in 2019. They named it the LIFE Act. It went into effect automatically after the United States Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade decision in 2022.
Smith has one older child, a boy, age seven.
- Makayla Richards, Donesha Aldridge (11Alive), Jennifer Bellamy. C-section from Georgia mom who was declared brain dead — 11 alive, June 16, 2025
- Baby of brain-dead pregnant woman kept alive under abortion law has been delivered, family says — NBC News, June 17, 2025
- Madeline Halpert. Baby of brain-dead woman delivered in Georgia, woman’s mother says — BBC, June 16, 2025
