A pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared life support for three months after a medical emergency to grow the fetus enough to deliver, a movement of her family said that according to the strict law against the state's abortion law, she had asked for the state.
Members of Adriana Smith's family say that doctors of the Emory University Hospital have told them that they must not stop or remove the devices that keep their breathing because the abortion of the state can be demonstrated according to cardiac activity – generally approximately six weeks after pregnancy.
If the due date is even more than three months away, it could be one of the longest of such pregnancies. Her family is angry that the law of Georgia, which restricts abortion as soon as heart activity is determined, does not allow relatives to have a word about whether a pregnant woman is kept on life support.
The law was adopted in 2019, but only after Roe v. Wade in 2022 DobBs against Jackson Women's Health Organization from the Supreme Court, which opened the door to the state abortion ban.
Smith, a 30-year-old mother and nurse, was declared brain dead in February in February.
Newkirk said Smith was now 21 weeks pregnant. Removing breathing pipes and other life -saving devices would probably kill the fetus.
Emory Healthcare said that due to data protection rules, she could not comment on a single case, but published an explanation in which “consensus of clinical experts, medical literature and legal guidelines” are used to support our providers, since they are given individual treatment recommendations based on compliance with Georgia's laws of Georgia and all other applicable laws and the abortion laws. “
Twelve states force bans for abortion in all pregnancy stages, and three others have bans like Georgia who start after about six weeks.
Like the others, the ban on Georgia contains an exception if an abortion is necessary to maintain the life of women.
Legal confusion about the rights of the fetus
Newkirk said her daughter had an intensive headache more than three months ago and went in Atlantas Northside Hospital, where she received medication and was released. The next morning her friend woke up for air and called 911. Emory University Hospital decided that she had blood clots in her brain and she was declared brain dead.
Smith's family, including her five -year -old son, still visits her in the hospital.
Newkirk said Wxia that the family said that the fetus had liquid in the brain and that they got their health.
“She is pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, cannot walk, cannot survive if he was born,” said Newkirk.
She did not say whether the family wants Smith to be removed from life maintenance.
Monica Simpson, Executive Director of Sistersong, the senior plaintiff in a lawsuit that the abortion law in Georgia questioned, said the situation was problematic.
“Your family deserves the right to have a decision -making authority on her medical decisions,” said Simpson in an explanation. “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.”
Lois Shepherd, a bioethicist and legal professor at the University of Virginia, said she does not believe that life support in this case is legally required.
But she said whether a state could insist that Smith is still uncertain for life preservation, as Roe's tipping over, which found that Feten did not have people's rights.
“Pre-Dobbs, a fetus had no rights,” said Shepherd. “And the state's interest in fetal life could not be so strong that other important rights are overcome, but now we don't know.”
Complications often in known cases
Brain death during pregnancy is rare. Cases in which doctors want to extend pregnancy after a woman has been declared brain dead are still less common.
A review of 2021 searched for medical literature, which decades back, in which doctors declared a brainotic woman and wanted to extend her pregnancy. It found 35.
Of these, 27 led to a live birth, whereby the majority either immediately adopted healthy or with normal follow-up tests. Dr. Vincenzo Berghella, who co -authorized the study, also warned that Georgia's case was much more difficult because pregnancy was less wide than the woman was declared brain fat.
In the 35 cases he examined, the doctors were only able to extend the pregnancy on average for seven weeks before the complications could intervene.
“It is difficult to keep the mother out of heart failure,” said Berghella, director of maternal maternal medical medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
Berghella also found a case from Germany that led to a live birth when the woman was declared as far as Smith in nine weeks of pregnancy.
Georgia's law gives a fetus the personality. Those who prefer the personality say, fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses should be seen as people with the same rights as those already born.
The Senator of Georgia State, Ed Settler, a Republican who sponsored the 2019 law, said he supported emory interpretation.
“I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital does everything it can to save the child's life,” said Setezler. “I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it underlines the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital acts appropriate.”
Watch the then VP candidate Tim Walz after the death of the Georgia woman Amber Thurman:
The decision of states decides in abortion rules that put American life into danger, says Walz, says Walz
During the CBS News Vice Presidential debate on Tuesday, the Democratic candidate Tim Walz countered the Republican candidate JD Vances' comment that states should make their own decisions about abortion by referring to the case of a Georgia woman who tried to get out of the state to get out of the state. “There is a very real chance if Amber Thurman had lived in Minnesota, she would be alive,” said Walz.
Setzler said he believes that it was sometimes acceptable to eliminate the life support of someone who is brain dead, but that the law is “an appropriate check” because the mother is pregnant. He said Smith's relatives had “good decisions”, including the child or offering adoption.
Georgia's abortion ban was already in the spotlight.
Last year Prublica reported that two women had died in Georgia after they had not received proper medical treatment for complications by taking abortion pills. The stories of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller joined the presidential breed. The democrat Kamala Harris said that the deaths were the result of the abortion bans that came into force in Georgia and elsewhere to Dobbs.
