The family of Adriana Smith, a Georgia woman who was declared brain-dead but kept on life support to carry her pregnancy due to the state's abortion law, has shared a heartbreaking update about her baby.
In a recent GoFundMe update, Smith's mother, April Newkirk, wrote, "It's holiday season and im very down."
She said her grandson, Chance, weighs 11 pounds and is still being held at the neonatal intensive care unit. She wrote the baby "will not be coming home soon" but will be moved to a different hospital “for more help."
“I want everyone to know that im very grateful for you[r prayers] and help continue to pray because God has the final say so," she concluded.
Smith, 31, was declared brain-dead while about nine weeks pregnant and had been kept alive on ventilators for several months so that the baby could be delivered in June.
The family announced that her son, Chance, was delivered via emergency cesarean section on June 13, according to The Washington Post.
Georgia passed a law banning abortions after roughly six weeks in November 2022, as reported by USA Today, which Newkirk said forced the family to keep her daughter alive.
Newkirk told WXIA-TV, "I'm not saying that we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy. What I'm saying is, we should have had a choice."
She described how Smith, a registered nurse at Emory University Hospital, had visited Northside Hospital with intense headaches.
"They gave her some medication, but they didn't do any tests. No CT scan. If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented," Newkirk said, explaining that a CT scan later revealed several blood clots in Smith's brain.
According to NBC News, the Georgia LIFE Act required the family to keep Smith on life support for the duration of the pregnancy, though the state attorney general's office stated in May that nothing in the law "requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death."
Chance was born weighing about 1 pound, 13 ounces, and has remained in the neonatal intensive care unit since birth. Smith died on June 28.
