Adriana Smith is a patient at the Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta. Emergency complications at the beginning of her pregnancy led to the death of the brain, but according to her family, she remains over the course of pregnancy. Her case has become a symbol for the medical and ethical questions that result from a law of Georgia that prohibits the most abortions and gives fetal “personal rights”.
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When she landed in a hospital in Georgia with emergency complications, the 30-year-old nurse of Atlanta, Adriana Smith, was almost nine weeks pregnant.
Her condition, which included several blood clots, worsened when the doctors tried to save their lives, Smith's mother April Newkirk told Atlanta TV broadcaster Wxia.
“You carried out a CT scan and she had blood clots in her head. So you asked me if you could do a procedure to alleviate it, and I said yes,” said Newkirk. “And then they called me back and said that they couldn't do it.”
She said the doctors declared Smith as “brain” and had put them on life preservation without consulting them.
“It's torture for me,” said Newkirk. “I come here and see how my daughter breathes the ventilation, but she's not there.”
That was more than three months ago. Smith is still pregnant.
“And I don't say that we decided to end their pregnancy,” said Newkirk, “but I say we should have had a choice.”
With the exception of an e -mail declaration, Emory Healthcare does not comment on the case.
“Emory healthcare uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature and legal guidelines to support our providers because they submit individual treatment recommendations based on the abortion laws and all other applicable laws in Georgia,” says the explanation. “Our top priorities are still the security and well -being of the patients we serve.”
The Georgia's Law HB 481, also known as The Life Act, said goodbye in 2019. Shortly after the Supreme Court of the USA Roe v. Wade with his Dobbs judgment on June 24, 2022.
The law prohibits abortion according to the point where an ultrasound can recognize cardiac activity in an embryo. As a rule, this is about six weeks in pregnancy.
There are also Smith's fetus the same rights as one person. The law states that “unborn children are a class of living, different people” and explains that the state of Georgia “recognizes the advantages of full legal recognition for an unborn child”.
Has the fetal “personality” meant that life maintenance was required?
Twenty states now prohibit abortion in or before the 18 -week pregnancy; According to the Guttmacher Institute, a non -participating research group that supports abortion rights are almost a little abortion ban with very limited exceptions.
Like Georgia, some of these countries built their abortion restrictions on the legal concept of the “personality” and therefore give legal rights and protective measures for an embryo or a fetus during pregnancy.
Smith's case represents a large test of how this type of law is applied in certain medical situations. Although conservatives and politicians agree on abortion in their opposition, they do not always agree on the framework of the law in cases like Smith.
For example, the Republican Attorney General of Georgia, Chris Carr, does not believe to limit the options in Smith's support. Therefore, it would not be equivalent to cancel the fetus.
“There is nothing in the law of life in which doctors have to keep a woman after the death of the brain. The removal of life preservation is not an action with the aim of ending a pregnancy,” said Carr in a statement.
But the Republican Senator Ed Settler Georgia, who wrote the Life Act, disagrees. Emory's doctors acted appropriately when Smith used life support, he told the Associated Press.
“I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital does everything it can to save the life of the child,” Desszler told the AP. “I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it underlines the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital acts appropriate.”
Personality energies anti-abdominal movements
“The problem is that the law of Georgia is not just a ban on abortion, it is a” personality “that explains that a fetus or embryo is a person that an unborn child, as the law is, is one person,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal professor at the University of California-Davis and the author ” Reproduction overturns. “
The legal concept of “personality” has an impact on abortion care such as regulating fertility treatment or the potential criminalization of pregnancy complications such as dead birth and miscarriage.
According to Georgia, the expansion of personal rights to a fetus changes the calculation of child support. It also enables an embryo or a fetus to be used as a dependency on government taxes.
But the idea of ​​personality is not new, said Ziegler.
“It was the goal for practically everyone in the anti-abdominal movement since the 1960s. That does not mean that the Republicans have such republicans. It does not necessarily mean that this will happen.
The personality movement has achieved more traction since the judge's judge in 2022.
After the state's Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were humans, the state legislature had to join Alabama so that the fertility clinics could continue their work.
“This is a kind of future that we see when we continue to move towards the fetal personality,” said Ziegler. “Every state of the Supreme Court, as we have just seen in Alabama, can give them new life.”
Georgia's law and pregnancy results
In Georgia, dozens of OB-GYNS have warned that the state law affects patient care-a problem in a state with one of the worst mothers-mortality rates in the USA and in black women more than twice as likely dying from a pregnancy-related cause as white women.
Former members of the Georgia Mothers -however review committee have associated the state's abortion ban on the delayed emergency care and the death of at least two women in the state, as Propublica recently reported.
Personality determination has a profound impact on medical care, said Atlanta Ob-Gyn Dr. Zoe Lucier-Julian.
“These laws create an environment of fear and attempt to force us as a provider to adapt to the state instead of adapting to our patients where we are working so hard,” said Lucier-Julian.
Lucier-Julian said that happened with Emory Healthcare in the case of Adriana Smith.
But Cole Muzio, President of the conservative Christian frontline policy, says that the State's abortion law should not have an effect on how Emory Smith's support deals.
“This is a fairly clear case that is defined in the language of HB 481. What these bans is is an abortion after a heartbeat has been determined. That is the scope of our law,” he said.
“Taking a woman from life support is not an abortion. It's just not,” he added. “Well, I am incredibly grateful that this child is also born in the middle of tragic circumstances. This is a whole human life that can be lived due to the victim of this beautiful mother.”
A lawsuit that questions the law of Georgia and whose effects on public health is still working through the courts. It was submitted by a coalition of doctors, the Aclu of Georgia, the planned parenthood, the Center for Productive Rights and other groups.
Smith's mother April Newkirk said her daughter first went to another hospital in Atlanta to get help with severe headaches and was sent home where her symptoms quickly deteriorated.
“She grabbed air in her sleep and struggled to air,” she said to the station. “It was more than likely blood.”
Now Newkirk said that the family was not certain whether the fetus is being able to survive the stress that is associated in months of keeping life – or escaping the risks of severe disabilities.
“My grandson may be blind, cannot walk, wheelchair users, we don't know if he will live as soon as she has him,” she said.
But she added that the family would love him, no matter what happens.
This story comes from NPR's health reporting with Wabe and Kff Health News.
