Her story sent shockwaves across the country. Last February, Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse living in Atlanta, suffered from intense headaches. Mother of a 7-year-old, she was also about 8 weeks pregnant at the time. As a precaution, she went to Northside Hospital, but was eventually sent home with medication, without any thorough examination, according to her family’s GoFundMe page. A few days later, Adriana Smith woke up in respiratory distress. Her partner called 911 and she was taken to Emory University Hospital. A CT scan revealed blood clots in her brain, and Adriana Smith was declared brain dead.
When law takes precedence over ethical issues
However, the state of Georgia’s abortion law, known as the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, prohibits any abortion once cardiac activity is detected in a fetus, that is, at around six weeks of pregnancy, except in certain situations, notably in cases of rape or incest. Since Adriana Smith was more than 6 weeks pregnant and her situation was not on the list of exceptions or addressed by Georgia state law, the doctors considered that they were not authorized to terminate her pregnancy. For 3 months, she was therefore placed on ventilatory assistance to enable the fetus to grow sufficiently to be delivered, without the consent of her family.
« She has been breathing through machines for more than 90 days. It’s torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there », said her mother, April Newkirk.
On June 13, Adriana Smith’s child, named Chance, was born very premature after an emergency cesarean section was performed on her body. Born at around six months’ gestation, he weighed 1 lb 13 oz (≈ 0.82 kg) and was admitted to the neonatal unit.
« He’s expected to be OK. He’s just fighting. We just want prayers for him. Just keep praying for him, » confided April Newkirk.
Two days later, Adriana Smith’s family commemorated her 31st birthday at a somber private church service attended by abortion rights groups. Four days later, Adriana Smith was taken off life support. Her funeral will take place on June 28 in Lithonia, Georgia.
A tragedy that rekindles anger and mobilizes defenders of abortion rights
Adriana Smith’s case caused a stir across the country. On social networks, many women denounced a corpse transformed into an incubator, used without consent, and on which an autopsy and not a caesarean section was performed. Others questioned the exact circumstances of the post-mortem operation, which was carried out in an emergency, perhaps because the unborn child could no longer develop in its mother’s dead body.
“There’s nothing wrong with a postmortem c-section when the fetus was viable and the mother passed away and you’re trying to save the baby. That’s a completely different set of circumstances than Adriana Smith’s case. She was only 8-9 weeks pregnant when she died. Fetus was nowhere near viable. The state of Georgia and Emory Hospital ignored her family’s wishes and used Adriana as a human incubator for nearly 3 months because the clump of cells had a ‘heartbeat’”, wrote one user, @thelaurenelyse, on Threads.
While for some, the birth of Chance marks the end of Adriana Smith’s story, this is not the case. Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing a federal right to abortion, this case reveals the concrete violence of anti-abortion laws in some states. Congresswoman Judy Chu, promoter of the Women’s Health Protection Act, denounced in a press release:
“This is a tragedy. A brain-dead woman is being forced to stay on life support against her family’s wishes, because of Georgia’s extreme abortion ban. Let’s be clear: this is not a gray area. Georgia’s extreme abortion law has robbed Adriana Smith and her family of choice in the last moments of her life. This is what Republican abortion laws look like in practice: total disregard for women’s lives, and even their deaths. It’s beyond disgraceful. In the quest to control women’s bodies, anti-abortion extremists have saddled us with laws that reduce women to nothing more than a womb. Adriana Smith is not an incubator. Adriana is a person. She is a mother, a nurse, and a daughter. She deserves dignity and the right to rest in peace. We do not have to stand for this in America. My bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, would restore the right to abortion care nationwide and stop states from enforcing cruel, medically unnecessary restrictions, like the one in Georgia that has trapped Adriana. We only need four Republicans in the House to join with us to pass this vital legislation to restore bodily autonomy to every person in this country, regardless of their state or zip code”.
Adriana Smith has become a symbol of the fight for abortion rights in the US and has reignited the debate, and with it, the campaign for a return to federal abortion rights. The Reproductive Freedom Caucus has called for a federal resolution to repeal these laws and grant women a true right to control their own bodies.
On June 17, the day she was taken off life support, three Democratic House Representatives – Nikema Williams, Ayanna Pressley and Sara Jacobs – announced a resolution describing the case as a “direct result of the black maternal health crisis” and urging states to end their abortion bans and legally clarify the issue of fetal personhood.
