A family has spoken out after their pregnant daughter was kept on life support despite being brain-dead due to abortion laws.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother from Atlanta, was nine weeks pregnant when she began experiencing intense headaches in early February.
Seeking medical attention, she was reportedly sent home with just medication — no tests, no scans.
“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” her mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”
The next morning, her boyfriend found her gasping for air and making gurgling noises in her sleep — signs, her family believes, of internal bleeding. Rushed to the hospital, a CT scan revealed multiple blood clots in her brain.
Doctors prepared for surgery, but it was too late. Adriana was declared brain dead.
Under normal circumstances, her family could begin the grieving process. But due to Georgia’s controversial abortion legislation — known as the “heartbeat bill” — Adriana’s body has been kept alive on machines for over three months, simply because she was pregnant.
“She’s been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,” Newkirk said. “It’s torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, on a ventilator but she’s not there. And I'm touching her. And her son — I bring him to see her.”
Her grandson doesn’t understand what’s happening. “It’s been heartbreaking seeing her grandson believe his mother is ‘just sleeping,’” Newkirk said.
Georgia’s law bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy if there’s a detectable heartbeat, with limited exceptions — only in the case of a “medical emergency,” or when the fetus is deemed “medically futile.”
Since Adriana is already brain dead, doctors say she no longer qualifies as being in medical danger. And that’s where her case falls into a chilling legal limbo.
Doctors reportedly told the family they’re legally obligated to keep Adriana alive until her fetus — now at 21 weeks — reaches viability. The goal is 32 weeks, at which point they plan to induce labor.
“They’re hoping to get the baby to at least 32 weeks,” April said. “But every day that goes by, it’s more cost, more trauma, more questions.”
The emotional toll is devastating — made worse by the fact that the family has no legal say in the matter.
“I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision,” Newkirk said. “And if not, then their partner or their parents.”
She emphasized they still don’t know what they would have chosen. But what hurts most is not having a choice.
“She’s pregnant with my grandson. But my grandson may be blind, may not be able to walk, wheelchair bound, we don't know if he'll live once she has him,” she said. “It should have been left up to the family because, I'm in my fifties, her dad is in his fifties, so we're gonna have the responsibility with her partner to raise her sons.
"And I'm not saying that we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy, what I'm saying is we should have had a choice.”
Now, Adriana’s family lives in suspended grief — her body being used to carry a pregnancy she’ll never know, while her loved ones wrestle with trauma, rising medical costs, and heartbreaking uncertainty about the baby’s future.
“This decision should’ve been left to us,” April said. “Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have — and we’re going to be the ones raising him.”