Adriana Smith
The pregnancy of Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black woman from Georgia, U.S., is the focus of an ongoing medical ethics controversy which began in February 2025. After a medical emergency when 9 weeks pregnant, Smith was declared brain dead at a Georgia hospital. The hospital has since kept her body on life support to let the fetus grow enough to be delivered, a move that her family says the hospital told them was required under the state's abortion law. The case has drawn national media attention to restrictive laws on abortion in the United States.
Background
Death
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black nurse in Georgia, U.S., went to Northside Hospital in Atlanta after experiencing headaches in February 2025. She was 9 weeks pregnant at the time. The hospital released her after she got medication. In the morning, her boyfriend called 911 after he woke up to her gasping for air. At the Emory University Hospital, she was declared brain-dead after having been found with blood clots in her brain.[1]
Pregnancy after death
Smith's body has been on life support for three months to let the fetus grow enough to be delivered, a move her family says a hospital told them was required under Georgia's anti-abortion law (also known as the LIFE Act).[2] Passed in 2019, the law was not enforced until the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.[1]
Legality and bioethics concerns
Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law...[1] Lois Shepherd...[1]
case of Marlise Munoz and others found in a 2021 review that co-authored by Vincenzo Berghella[1]
Monica Simpson, who leads SisterSong (lead plaintiff in lawsuit against LIFE Act)...[1]
Democratic state senator Nabilah Islam Parkes wrote[when?] to Republican state attorney general Chris Carr for how the state abortion law would apply to Smith's case; Carr's office stated: "There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death. Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy." Emory Healthcare did not respond to the legal opinion.[3]
Law professor Mary Ziegler, of the University of California, Davis, stated that there is a disconnect between "...the attorney general who says, 'No problem, go ahead,' and [...] doctors and their lawyers reading the law and saying, 'We're not so sure", a situation that she says has become less uncommon after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. She stated that the fetal personhood provision of the state's abortion law may be causing the hospital system to interpret the law as it has in Smith's case. Ziegler also cited the deaths of two Black women in Georgia—Amber Thurman and Candi Miller—which were found preventable by a state body in 2024.[3] Per AP: "Georgia’s abortion ban has been in the spotlight before. [...] The stories of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller entered into the presidential race..."[1]
Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson, in the New York Times, ...[4]
See also
- Black maternal mortality in the United States
- Death of Chaniece Wallace
- Death of Sha-Asia Washington
- Race and maternal health in the United States
- Women's health movement in the United States
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Amy, Jeff; Mulvihill, Geoff; Thanawala, Sudhin (May 16, 2025). "Hospital tells family brain-dead Georgia woman must carry fetus to birth because of abortion ban". Atlanta: AP News. Archived from the original on May 16, 2025. Retrieved May 16, 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Burke, Minyvonne (May 15, 2025). "Georgia mother says she is being forced to keep brain-dead pregnant daughter alive under abortion ban law". NBC News. Archived from the original on May 16, 2025. Retrieved May 16, 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gringlas, Sam (May 21, 2025). "A brain-dead woman's pregnancy raises questions about Georgia's abortion law". NPR. Retrieved May 24, 2025.
- ↑ Mutcherson, Kimberly (24 May 2025). "Opinion | A Brain-Dead Woman Is Being Kept on Machines to Gestate a Fetus. It Was Inevitable". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2025.
Possible sources
- https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-woman-says-pregnant-daughter-kept-on-life-support-to-comply-with-abortion-law/HPNCM2N4ZFBITCPNFZ3ZJXNDWI/
- https://theatlantavoice.com/georgia-abortion-ban-case-sparks-outrage/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/19/georgia-mother-pregnant-brain-dead/
- https://www.wabe.org/legal-questions-raised-by-case-of-pregnant-woman-declared-braindead/
- https://apnews.com/article/pregnant-woman-brain-dead-abortion-ban-georgia-80b463f0f398d5a9c62f8888739025cb
- blog posts from American Journal of Bioethics: Arthur Caplan [1], Nathan Nobis [2]
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