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A Georgia woman who was declared brain dead in February has given birth after four months on life support.
Adriana Smith, an Atlanta nurse, gave birth via emergency cesarean section at 29 weeks to a 1-pound, 13-ounce baby boy named Chance on Friday, June 13.
Baby Chance is currently in the NICU. Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive that “he’s expected to be OK,” adding: “He’s just fighting. We just want prayers for him. Just keep praying for him. He’s here now.”
According to Newkirk, doctors had been planning to deliver him at 32 weeks, but Smith had an emergency C-section Friday for unspecified reasons.
Smith, who turned 31 on Sunday, will be taken off life support on Tuesday, June 17, her mother said.
“I’m her mother,” Newkirk said. “I shouldn’t be burying my daughter. My daughter should be burying me.”
Smith also has a 7-year-old son.
Background
In February, Smith visited a hospital complaining of painful headaches but was sent home with medication. The next morning, her boyfriend found her “gasping for air” and called 911.
After a CT scan, doctors discovered multiple blood clots in her brain and eventually determined nothing could be done and declared the then-30-year-old nurse, who was nine weeks pregnant, brain dead.
Smith’s case garnered national attention in May after a local news station interviewed Newkirk, who said Emory University Hospital in Atlanta said that Smith had to remain on life support until the birth of her unborn child, citing what Newkirk said was the Georgia state abortion law.
Newkirk said last month that not having a choice regarding her daughter’s treatment plan was difficult. She also expressed concern about raising both her grandsons and the mounting medical costs.
Georgia law prohibits abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. However, removing life support from a pregnant woman is not a direct abortion.
In response to national outcry over Smith’s case, the Georgia attorney general’s office released a statement in May clarifying that the state’s heartbeat law, which prohibits abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, did not require Smith be kept alive.
“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” said the statement, issued by Attorney General Chris Carr’s office.
Quoting the law itself, the statement continued: “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’”
A spokesperson for the Georgia House told the Washington Post in May that the LIFE Act is “completely irrelevant” regarding Smith’s situation, saying “any implication otherwise is just another gross mischaracterization of the intent of this legislation by liberal media outlets and left-wing activists.”
Although he supports the hospital’s decision to keep the unborn child alive until viability, state Sen. Ed Stetzer, the original sponsor of the LIFE Act, told CNA in May that “the removal of the life support of the mother is a separate act” from an abortion.
David Gibbs III, a lawyer at the National Center for Life and Liberty who was a lead attorney in the Terri Schiavo case, said he thinks there may be a misunderstanding about which law the hospital is invoking in Smith’s case. Georgia’s Advance Directive for Health Care Act may be the law at play here, Gibbs told CNA.
Section 31-32-9 of that law states that if a woman is pregnant and “in a terminal condition or state of permanent unconsciousness” and the unborn child is viable, certain life-sustaining procedures may not be withdrawn.
“The majority of states have advance directive laws with a pregnancy exclusion,” Gibbs explained.
A pregnancy exclusion means that if a patient is pregnant, the law prioritizes the survival of her unborn child over her stated wishes in an advance directive if there is a conflict between her wishes and the child’s well-being.
“When in doubt, the law should err on the side of life,” he said.
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