A Georgia family is speaking out after their daughter, Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother, was declared brain dead in February — but has remained on life support for more than three months because she was pregnant.
Intense headaches
According to her family, doctors at Emory University Hospital told them Georgia’s strict abortion law, which bans the procedure once cardiac activity is detected (typically around six weeks), prevented them from removing life-sustaining equipment — even though Smith is legally dead.
”She’s pregnant with my grandson,” her mother, April Newkirk, told NBC affiliate WXIA. “But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born.”
Newkirk said her daughter went to Northside Hospital in February with intense headaches before being discharged. The next morning, her boyfriend found her gasping for air. At Emory, doctors found blood clots in her brain and declared her brain dead. Smith was 8 weeks pregnant at the time.
She is now at 21 weeks — still nearly three months from her due date. According to her mother, Adriana has “been breathing through machines for more than 90 days.”
The family says doctors told them removing breathing tubes would result in the fetus’s death — something considered an abortion under state law.
“It’s torture for me,” April Newkirk tells WXIA. “I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there.”
“I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision,” she said. “And if not, then their partner or their parents,” she told Alive11.
Not allowed to stop or remove the devices
WXIA reports that the goal is to maintain Smith on life support until Adriana’s baby reaches a point — likely around 32 weeks — where he can survive independently.
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong and a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s abortion law, says:
“Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions. Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatization, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing.”
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According to Simpson, the first problem in Smith’s case was that she didn’t get the proper care when she first went for help with her headaches.
“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”
Experts say Georgia law does not explicitly require life support for brain-dead pregnant women.
”Removing the woman’s mechanical ventilation or other support would not constitute an abortion,” said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer. ”Continued treatment is not legally required.”
”We don’t know.”
Lois Shepherd, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, agreed: “Pre-Dobbs, a fetus didn’t have any rights… but now we don’t know.”
Despite medical concerns — Newkirk says doctors told her the fetus has fluid on the brain — Georgia law considers a fetus a person under its “heartbeat law,” passed in 2019 and enforced after the fall of Roe v. Wade, according to AP.
Republican state Sen. Ed Setzler, who sponsored the law, defended the hospital’s decision: “I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child… I think the hospital is acting appropriately.”
He added that the family has “good choices,” including adoption if the child survives. Meanwhile, Smith’s five-year-old son still visits her in the hospital —unaware of the legal battle keeping his mother alive.
