A pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain-dead is being kept alive by ventilators because of the state’s law banning abortions, the woman’s mother says, telling local news that the family has no say in the matter.
April Newkirk said her 30-year-old daughter, Adriana Smith, began experiencing intense headaches in early February. Smith was nine weeks pregnant at the time with her second child, NBC affiliate WXIA-TV of Atlanta reported.
Smith sought treatment at Northside Hospital but was released and given medication, Newkirk told the station. Newkirk said the hospital did not run any tests or scans.
Northside did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
A day after seeking treatment, Smith’s boyfriend woke up to find her gasping for air and making gargling noises, Newkirk told WXIA.
Smith was rushed to Emory Decatur and then transferred to Emory University Hospital, where a CT scan showed multiple blood clots in her brain, the news station reported.
Newkirk told the news station that her daughter was declared brain-dead and has “been breathing through machines for more than 90 days.”
“It’s torture for me,” she said. “I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there.”
Newkirk declined an interview when contacted by NBC News on Thursday morning.
According to WXIA, the plan is to keep Smith alive until the baby boy can safely survive on his own, most likely at 32 weeks.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the state’s near-total abortion ban, known as the LIFE Act, in 2019, but it didn’t take effect until 2022, after it faced a legal challenge and the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.
Under the law, abortions are illegal after six weeks of pregnancy. Exceptions include some situations to protect the woman’s life and health, when fetal anomalies are detected, and in cases of rape and incest that have been documented with the police.
Newkirk told the station that her daughter is currently 21 weeks pregnant.
“It should have been left up to the family,” Newkirk said, telling the station that doctors informed the family they are legally not allowed to consider any other options.
“I’m not saying that we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy, but what I’m saying is, we should have had a choice,” she said.
A spokesperson for Emory Healthcare said it “uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualized treatment recommendations in compliance with Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.”
“Our top priorities continue to be the safety and wellbeing of the patients we serve,” the spokesperson said.
Monica Simpson, executive director of the organization SisterSong, said the first issue with Smith’s case is that she did not receive proper care when she sought help for her headaches.
The situation the family is in now raises another issue, the gray area with the state's abortion ban, Simpson said in a phone call Thursday.
The ban creates “this type of uncertainty for medical care providers, it creates this type of uncertainty for folks who are coming up against it,” Simpson said.
“It’s not black and white,” she added. “There’s, unfortunately, these gray areas that our elected officials, our state, our governor did not take into consideration when moving this ban into play. What we’ve seen … is that there are gray areas and that’s where the danger comes in.”
Newkirk said the family is also having to deal with the financial responsibility of keeping Smith on life support.
