A Georgia woman declared brain-dead and kept on life support for more than three months because she was pregnant was removed from a ventilator in June and died, days after doctors delivered her 1-pound, 13-ounce baby by emergency cesarean section. The baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit.<\/p>\n
The case has drawn national attention to Georgia\u2019s six-week abortion ban and its impacts on pregnancy care.<\/p>\n
Adriana Smith was put on life support at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta in February. The then-30-year-old Atlanta nurse was more than eight weeks<\/a> pregnant and suffering dangerous complications.<\/p>\n Her condition deteriorated as doctors tried to save her life, Smith\u2019s mother told Atlanta <\/a>TV station WXIA<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did a CT scan, and she had blood clots all in her head,\u201d April Newkirk said. \u201cSo they had asked me if they could do a procedure to relieve them, and I said yes. And then they called me back and they said that they couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n She said doctors declared Smith brain-dead and put her on life support without consulting her.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I\u2019m not saying that we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy,\u201d Newkirk said, \u201cbut what I\u2019m saying is, we should have had a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n Emory Healthcare declined to comment on the specifics of Smith\u2019s case. After doctors removed Smith from life support, Emory issued a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe top priorities at Emory Healthcare continue to be the safety and wellbeing of the patients and families we serve,\u201d the health system said. \u201cEmory Healthcare uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature and legal guidance to support our providers as they make medical recommendations. Emory Healthcare is legally required to maintain the confidentiality of the protected health information of our patients, which is why we are unable to comment on individual matters and circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n In a previous statement, Emory Healthcare said it complies \u201cwith Georgia\u2019s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.\u201d<\/p>\n Abortion Laws and Fetal Personhood<\/strong><\/p>\n Georgia\u2019s HB 481<\/a> \u2014 the Living Infants Fairness and Equality, or LIFE, Act \u2014 passed in 2019. It took effect shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em> with its ruling in Dobbs<\/em> v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em> on June 24, 2022.<\/p>\n The law bans abortion after the point at which an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity in an embryo<\/a>. Typically, this occurs about six weeks into pregnancy, often before women know they\u2019re pregnant.<\/p>\n The law also gave fetuses the same rights as people.<\/p>\n It says that \u201cunborn children are a class of living, distinct persons\u201d and that the state of Georgia \u201crecognizes the benefits of providing full legal recognition to an unborn child.\u201d<\/p>\n Nineteen states now ban abortion at or before 19 weeks of gestation; 13 of those have a near-total ban on all abortions with very limited exceptions, according to the Guttmacher Institute<\/a>, a nonpartisan research group that supports abortion rights.<\/p>\n Like Georgia, some of these states built their abortion restrictions around the legal concept of \u201cpersonhood,\u201d thus conferring legal rights and protections on an embryo or fetus during pregnancy.<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s case has represented a major test of how this type of law will be applied in certain medical situations.<\/p>\n Despite mainly being unified in their opposition to abortion, conservatives and politicians in Georgia do not publicly agree on the scope of the law in cases like Smith\u2019s.<\/p>\n For example, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr<\/a>, a Republican, said that the law should not restrict the options for care in a case like Smith\u2019s and that removing life support wouldn\u2019t be equivalent to aborting a fetus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,\u201d Carr said in a statement. \u201cRemoving life support is not an action \u2018with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But Republican state Sen. Ed Setzler<\/a>, who authored the LIFE Act, disagreed. Emory\u2019s doctors acted appropriately when they put Smith on life support, he told <\/a>T<\/a>he Associated Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child,\u201d Setzler said. \u201cI think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital is acting appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n Mary Ziegler<\/a>, <\/a>a law professor at the University of California-Davis and author of \u201cPersonhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction,\u201d said the problem is that Georgia\u2019s law \u201cisn\u2019t just an abortion ban. It\u2019s a \u2018personhood\u2019 law declaring that a fetus or embryo is a person, that an \u2018unborn child,\u2019 as the law puts it, is a person.\u201d<\/p>\n The legal concept of \u201cpersonhood\u201d has implications beyond abortion care, such as with the regulation of fertility treatment, or the potential criminalization of pregnancy complications such as stillbirth and miscarriage.<\/p>\n Under Georgia\u2019s law, extending rights of personhood to a fetus changes how child support is calculated. It also allows an embryo or fetus to be claimed as a dependent on state taxes.<\/p>\n But the idea of personhood is not new, Ziegler said.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>It has been the goal for virtually everyone in the anti-abortion movement since the 1960s,\u201d she said. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean Republicans like that. It doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that that\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen. But there is no daylight between the anti-abortion movement and the personhood movement. They\u2019re the same.\u201d<\/p>\n The personhood movement has gained more traction since the Dobbs <\/em>ruling in 2022.<\/p>\n In Alabama, after the state\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, the state legislature had to step in to allow fertility clinics to continue their work.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is sort of the future we\u2019re looking at if we move further in the direction of fetal personhood,\u201d Ziegler said. \u201cAny state Supreme Court, as we just saw in Alabama, can give them new life,\u201d she said referring to personhood laws elsewhere.<\/p>\n Fetal Personhood Laws Can Delay Care <\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n In Georgia, dozens of OB-GYNs have said that the law interferes with patient care \u2014 in a state where the maternal mortality <\/a>rate<\/a> is one of the worst in the U.S. and where Black women are more than twice as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.\u00a0<\/p>\n Members of Georgia\u2019s Maternal Mortality Review Committee<\/a> \u2014 who were later dismissed from the panel \u2014 linked the state\u2019s abortion ban to delayed emergency care and the deaths of at least two women in the state, as ProPublica report<\/a>ed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The personhood provision is having a profound effect on medical care, said Atlanta OB-GYN Zo\u00eb Lucier-Julian<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThese laws create an environment of fear and attempt to coerce us as providers to align with the state, as opposed to aligning with our patients that we work so hard to serve,\u201d Lucier-Julian said.<\/p>\n Lucier-Julian said that\u2019s what happened to Emory Healthcare in Smith\u2019s case.<\/p>\n Cole Muzio<\/a>, president of the Frontline Policy Council, a conservative Christian group, said the state\u2019s abortion law shouldn\u2019t have affected how Emory handled Smith\u2019s care.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a pretty clear-cut case, in terms of how it\u2019s defined in the language of HB 481,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat this bans is an abortion after a heartbeat is detected. That is the scope of our law.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTaking a woman off life support is not an abortion. It just isn\u2019t,\u201d Muzio said.\u201cNow, I am incredibly grateful that this child will be born even in the midst of tragic circumstances. That is a whole human life that will be able to be lived because of this beautiful mother\u2019s sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n A suit challenging Georgia\u2019s law<\/a> and its impact on public health is working its way through the courts. A coalition of physicians, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and other groups filed the suit.<\/p>\n Newkirk said her daughter had initially gone to a different Atlanta-area hospital for help with severe headaches, was given some medicine, and was sent home, where her symptoms quickly worsened.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was gasping for air in her sleep, gargling,\u201d she told WXIA in May. \u201cMore than likely, it was blood.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Newkirk said, the family is praying for her grandson to make it after the stress from months of life support.\u00a0<\/p>\n He is fighting, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy grandson may be blind, may not be able to walk, wheelchair-bound,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll live.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that the family will love him no matter what.<\/p>\n This article is from a partnership with\u00a0WABE<\/a> and\u00a0NPR<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. 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