“No family should endure this”: Georgia doctors keep a brain dead woman on life under abortion ban

Eight months after Georgia's abortion ban is the first law according to the Dobbs, according to which a woman died because she was unable to receive a standard continued planting, the so-called “heartbeat law” of the state is again on the news because a family is forced to keep a pregnant woman in life support to ensure that her fetus can be delivered if it is dead.

Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse, was declared nine weeks pregnant in February after suffering intensive headaches and grabbed air one night. The doctors in the Northside Hospital in Atlanta found that she had blood clots in her brain.

It was connected to breathing pipes and other life support devices, and doctors say that they cannot remove the machines for three months if they plan to deliver the fetus with which they are now 21 weeks pregnant.

Smith's mother, April Newkirk, has described the experience of how her daughter remains alive despite her “torture” of brain death.

“I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there,” she said at local news.

Smith's five -year -old son is one of the family members who continue to visit them in the hospital while waiting for them to reach 32 weeks of pregnancy.

“No family should have to endure this horror,” said the US representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

“Your family deserves the right to make decisions about her medical decisions,” said Monica Simpson, Executive Director of Sistersong, who in a statement submitted a lawsuit that questioned the abortion ban in Georgia. “Instead, they have over 90 days of retaumation, expensive medical costs and cruelty, unable to not be able to be able to remedy and move towards healing.”

The family is angry that the law of Georgia, which prohibits abortion in six weeks of pregnancy, if the cardiac activity of the fetus – not a heartbeat – cannot be determined, does not include a determination that enables families to say whether a pregnant person is permanently removed.

Doctors have informed the family that the fetus could also have health problems due to liquid that was recognized in the brain.

“She is pregnant with my grandson,” said Newkirk to Wxia. “But he may be blind, may not run, cannot survive if he was born.”

Smith's fate, after she had taken a brain dead, “should have been left to the family,” added Newkirk.

The human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid said laws like the ban that came into force in Georgia after the Supreme Court of the USA ROE v. Wade had lifted, show that the Republican Party does not see “women as humans, but as incubators”.

“Georgia prohibits the organ donation of those who died without their consent-but the six-week abortion ban in Georgia now forces a brain-fat woman without staying alive because she was nine weeks pregnant at the time of brain death,” said Rashid. “A body in Georgia has more rights to his body than women. Terrible cruelty.”

Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes (D-7) said that “Adriana and her family earn it better”.

“The Republicans of Georgia also refused physical autonomy in death,” she said. “This is cruel and inhumane.”