Intense headaches
The family of Adriana Smith says doctors at Emory University Hospital told them that Georgia’s restrictive abortion law has tied their hands — forcing them to keep a brain-dead woman alive to continue a pregnancy, despite her being legally dead for over three months.
“She’s pregnant with my grandson,” said her mother, April Newkirk, in an interview with NBC affiliate WXIA. “But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born.”
Smith, 26, reportedly began experiencing intense headaches in February and visited Northside Hospital. She was sent home, but the next morning, her boyfriend found her gasping for air. By the time she was rushed to Emory, doctors had discovered severe blood clots in her brain and declared her brain dead. At the time, she was eight weeks pregnant.
Now 21 weeks into the pregnancy, Smith has been on life support for over 90 days. Her family says doctors warned them that removing the breathing tubes — despite Smith’s legal death — would end the pregnancy, an act the state considers an abortion due to detectable fetal cardiac activity.
“It’s torture for me,” Newkirk said. “I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there.”
Struggling with grief and outrage, she added, “Every woman should have the right to make their own decision. And if not, then their partner or their parents should.”
Not allowed to stop or remove the devices
Adriana Smith has been legally brain dead for over 90 days. But doctors at Emory University Hospital are keeping her body alive — not for her, but for the fetus she was carrying when she collapsed in February. Her family says Georgia’s strict abortion law has left them powerless to say goodbye.
Now 21 weeks into the pregnancy, the goal, according to WXIA, is to maintain Smith on life support until the fetus reaches around 32 weeks — the point at which he might survive outside the womb.
Monica Simpson, executive director of the reproductive justice group SisterSong and a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging Georgia’s abortion restrictions, says the state has robbed Smith’s family of basic dignity.
“Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions,” Simpson said. “Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatization, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing.”
Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, says this nightmare could have been prevented. When Adriana went to Northside Hospital complaining of severe headaches, she was discharged without any neurological imaging.
“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Newkirk told 11Alive. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”
While the hospital cited the state’s abortion law — which bans the procedure once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks — some legal experts say this interpretation may be flawed.
“Removing the woman’s mechanical ventilation or other support would not constitute an abortion,” said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and attorney. “Continued treatment is not legally required.”
Still, the machines keep running. And Adriana’s family waits, grieving a daughter who is already gone, forced to watch her body be used as an incubator against her will — and theirs.
”We don’t know.”
Lois Shepherd, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, says the legal landscape has shifted dramatically since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision.
“Pre-Dobbs, a fetus didn’t have any rights,” she explained. “But now — we don’t know.”
It’s that uncertainty, experts say, that leaves families like Adriana Smith’s caught in legal and ethical limbo, where grief is prolonged, autonomy is denied, and the law is wielded not as a shield but as a shackle.
Despite serious medical concerns — including fluid on the brain, which doctors warned could affect the fetus’s survival and development — Georgia law treats the fetus as a legal person under its controversial “heartbeat law.” Passed in 2019 and enforced after Roe v. Wade was overturned, the law bans abortion once cardiac activity is detected, typically around six weeks.
For Adriana Smith’s family, the implications have been devastating. Even as her mother, April Newkirk, pleads for the chance to let her daughter rest, the law grants more protection to the fetus than to the brain-dead woman carrying it.
Republican state Senator Ed Setzler, who authored the legislation, 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,” Setzler told reporters. “I think the hospital is acting appropriately.”
To Smith’s family, though, it feels like compassion has been replaced by politics — and a grieving mother is left watching her daughter’s body endure weeks of mechanical life support for a baby who may never survive.
Senator Setzler added that the family has “good choices” if the baby survives — including adoption. But for Smith’s loved ones, those words ring hollow.
At her bedside, Adriana’s five-year-old son still visits, unaware that the machines keeping his mother “alive” are not signs of hope, but the result of a legal battle he can’t begin to understand. To him, she is simply sleeping — not brain dead, not gone, just quiet.
For her family, each day brings more anguish. The law sees Adriana as a vessel. But to them, she is a daughter, a mother, and a person who deserved dignity — not to become a symbol in a political war.
