A Georgia woman who was declared brain dead while pregnant and kept alive until the baby was born due to anti-abortion laws in the state has been removed from life support after delivering a son via C-section, her family says.
Adriana Smith, a 31-year-old mother and nurse, had been in a vegetative state since February after suffering blood clots in her brain.
According to her family, doctors were unable to humanely end her life due to Georgia’s strict anti-abortion legislation, which came into effect after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Though legally dead, Smith remained on life support for months until the birth of her baby, a boy named Chance, on June 13.
April Newkirk, Smith’s mother, confirmed to Atlanta news channel 11Alive, an NBC affiliate, that her daughter was removed from life support on Tuesday. Newkirk said she was frustrated that despite going to a hospital because of severe headaches, Smith was sent home after being denied proper medical testing that could have saved her life.
“All women should have a choice about their bodies,” Newkirk said. “And I think I want people to know that [Adriana] was a nurse, an RN. The same field that she worked in is the same people who failed her. Can you understand what I’m saying? They didn’t go that extra mile, not even that extra mile. They didn’t even do a CT scan on her. That would have detected it.
“I’m her mother. I shouldn’t be burying my daughter. My daughter should be burying me.”
Newkirk told the outlet that her grandson weighs one pound, 13 ounces and is currently being treated in the NICU at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
“He’s expected to be OK,” she said. “He’s just fighting. We just want prayers for him. Just keep praying for him. He’s here now,” she said.
Days earlier, on Sunday, members of Smith’s family and the community gathered in a sombre celebration of Smith’s 31st birthday.
April Newkirk, mother of Adriana Smith, speaks to a woman as family and community members gather on Smith’s birthday to celebrate her life and rally against Georgia’s ban on abortion, in Atlanta, Ga., June 15, 2025.
REUTERS / Megan Varner
Smith’s case gained widespread attention for highlighting the complexities and ambiguities of Georgia’s stringent anti-abortion policy, which prohibits abortions after cardiac activity in the embryo can be detected, generally around six weeks, except under circumstances where the pregnancy is medically futile, poses a threat to the mother’s life or is the result of rape or incest, in which case it can be aborted up to 20 weeks of gestation — but both of these situations require a police report.
Smith was about nine weeks pregnant when she was declared brain dead.
Her family is also upset that state law doesn’t allow relatives to have a say in whether a pregnant woman is kept on life support.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday that the system failed Smith.
“Adriana Smith should be here today. Her voice trusted, her medical crisis treated, her life saved, her dignity honored. But instead, her body was made an incubator for months following her death, her family denied the right to make personal medical decisions,” she wrote.
Georgia’s ban, known as the Life Act, became law in 2019, but did not come into effect until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said the law does not mean doctors can’t take a patient off life support if they are brain dead and pregnant, because the intended outcome, as in Smith’s case, was not to end her pregnancy.
“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” he said in a statement obtained by the Georgia Recorder. “Removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy,” he continued.
Sen. Ed Setzler, the Republican who sponsored Georgia’s anti-abortion bill, said he supported the hospital’s actions.
“I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child,” he told The Associated Press in May.
“I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital is acting appropriately.”
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s abortion law, said the situation is problematic.
“Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions,” Simpson said in a statement. “Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatization, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing.”
Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., explained that while a few states have laws that specifically limit removing treatment from a pregnant woman who is alive but incapacitated or brain dead, Georgia isn’t one of them.
“Removing the woman’s mechanical ventilation or other support would not constitute an abortion,” he said. “Continued treatment is not legally required.”
Lois Shepherd, a bioethicist and law professor at the University of Virginia, also said she does not believe life support was legally required in this case.
Meanwhile, an Emory Healthcare spokesperson told NBC that the hospital’s top priorities “continue to be the safety and well-being of the patients and families we serve.”
“Emory Healthcare uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature and legal guidance to support our providers as they make medical recommendations,” the spokesperson said.
Twelve U.S. states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy and three others have bans like Georgia’s that kick in after about six weeks.
Smith and her boyfriend also shared a five-year-old son. No further details on where the newborn boy will live were released to media.
Abortion is a legal, regulated medical procedure in Canada, though each province and territory has different guidelines related to terminating a pregnancy. “Everyone has the right to make decisions about their own bodies, and no one should be forced to carry an unwanted or unsafe pregnancy,” the government website says.
— With files from The Associated Press