A pregnant Georgian woman who was declared to be brain dead is being forced to stay on life support under a state anti-abortion law in order to let the fetus grow.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old mother and nurse, was declared legally dead in February after being declared brain dead, but is still currently attached to breathing tubes at 21 weeks pregnant to allow her fetus to grow.
According to her family, they are not being given the chance to take her off life support under Georgia’s “heartbeat law” and are still having to deal with the financial aspects.
Early on in the year, when she was around nine weeks pregnant with her second child, Smith sought treatment at Northside Hospital for intense headaches. Although no tests or scans were conducted, she was promptly released after being prescribed medication.
Just a few hours later, Smith’s boyfriend awoke to her gasping for air and called 911. At the hospital, doctors declared Smith brain dead after finding multiple blood clots in her brain.
Smith is expected to be on life support for a minimum of 11 more weeks, as the fetus might be able to survive on its own at around 32 weeks. Speaking to local news WXIA, Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, said that the fetus, however, may not be able to walk, survive or see as it currently has fluid in the brain, according to doctors.
“It’s torture for me,” said Newkirk per the news outlet. “I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not here.”
Passed in 2019, the state’s “heartbeat law” is a six-week abortion ban that forces personhood upon fetuses as long as a “fetal heartbeat” is present. By doing so, the law gives the fetus the same rights as those who are already born.
Only certain exceptions are provided in cases of futile pregnancies and medical emergencies. Cases of pregnancy as a result of rape and incest are constricted to only if the woman is less than 20 weeks pregnant and has filed a police report.
Under the law, at least two women in the state have died as a result of not being able to get proper medical care or a legal abortion. According to ProPublica, Amber Nicole Thurman passed away from a grave infection after taking abortion pills and encountering a complication where not all the fetal tissue was released. She was given the pills at a clinic in North Carolina where abortions are still legal; Thurman could not have stayed local as her pregnancy progressed to the ninth week.
When she went to Piedmont Henry Hospital for care, it took 20 hours for the doctors, who under the law could be prosecuted and jailed for a decade, to operate on her. At that point, proper care was delayed and Thurman passed away after two weeks.
Adriana Smith has been brain dead for over 90 days, but Georgia law requires doctors to keep her body alive because she’s pregnant. Her family says they’ve been stripped of medical decision-making and want people to understand the human toll of laws that ignore grief, choice, and… pic.twitter.com/TkxuiZtowI
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) May 15, 2025
Candi Miller was also a victim of the law, as she was denied an abortion despite having a chronic condition that made having another baby difficult for her. Aged 41, Miller was already diagnosed with lupus, hypertension and diabetes; the appearance of all three would have made another pregnancy painful and would have taken a toll on her body.
Unable to obtain a legal, medically supervised abortion, she ordered abortion pills online. Similar to Thurman, she also did not release all the fetal tissue, leading to an infection that left her bedridden. As her family watched her suffer, Miller was eventually found unresponsive days later in her bed. Her two-year-old was at her side.
Following their deaths, nonprofit SisterSong filed a lawsuit against the state and the abortion ban. Although a permanent state ban was issued and an appeals case reinstated the ban, the case is still ongoing.
In a statement, Monica Simpson, the executive director of SisterSong, commented on the latest news of Smith’s story, highlighting how problematic it is.
“Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions,” Simpson said per AP News. “Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatization, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing.”
