A Georgia woman kept on life support due to the state’s strict abortion laws has died after being given an emergency C-section to deliver her baby.
As announced by NBC affiliate 11Alive, Adriana Smith was removed from life support on Tuesday- shortly after her 31st birthday. The nurse was taken off of life support days after an emergency C-section was given to her body for the birth of her premature baby. The baby, a boy named Chance, reportedly weighs 1 pound and 13 ounces and is currently in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Per Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, he is expected to be okay. The infant is her second son; Smith was already a mother to a 7-year-old boy who believes his mother is still asleep, according to Newkirk.
At the beginning of the year, the then-30-year-old mother went to the hospital after experiencing intense headaches. After being released with no proper tests, Smith returned to the hospital after she began gasping for air and gurgling overnight. A CT scan was conducted only after her condition became severe, revealing blood clots. Then, eight weeks pregnant, she was put on a ventilator and declared legally brain dead.
Smith was forced to be on life support for months until now.
“It’s hard to process,” Newkirk told 11Alive. “I shouldn’t be burying my daughter. My daughter should be burying me.”
Her story drew national outcry after the family revealed that they were not given the choice to keep her on life support under Georgia’s “heartbeat law.” First enacted in 2019, the state’s “heartbeat law” is a six-week abortion ban that declares a fetus is a person if it has a “fetal heartbeat,” providing them with the same rights as someone who is already born.
On the day that Smith was taken off of life support, a resolution stemming from her story was introduced at the 119th Congress 1st session.
Created by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Congresswoman Nikema Williams and Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, the resolution calls for more legislation and policy changes to protect the rights and bodily autonomy of women, particularly Black women who are often burdened with higher rates of medical neglect.
The resolution focuses on the repeal of state laws that criminalize abortion and prevent pregnant women from having advance directives ignored in the event that a medical decision would have to be made that they cannot make themselves. It also urged Congress to refine how anti-abortion laws should be interpreted by medical professionals as well as guarantee that pregnant people have autonomy over their bodies.
“Women are worth more than their ability to get pregnant and give birth – we are human beings who should be trusted to make our own health care decisions. It’s devastating that Adriana is the latest casualty of our nation’s Black maternal health crisis and anti-abortion laws – but let’s ensure she’s the last,” said Congresswoman Jacobs. “This needs to be the watershed moment to end anti-abortion and fetal personhood laws and guarantee the rights and dignity of everyone to make the best health care decisions for themselves and their families.”
