Baby of Brain Dead Georgia Woman Kept Alive by Machines Delivered

The brain-dead pregnant woman who became a flashpoint in the national debate over reproductive rights and Georgia’s six-week abortion ban has delivered her baby, her family has announced.

Doctors told the family of 30-year-old mother and nurse Adriana Smith she had no chance of recovery after a series of blood clots in her brain left her brain dead in mid February, when she was about two months pregnant. Smith has been kept on life support since then to support the pregnancy.

The baby, Chance, was delivered Friday by emergency cesarean section and taken to the neonatal intensive care unit. Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive News the child was born prematurely weighing one pound 13 ounces. April Newkirk, mother of Adriana Smith, the brain-dead pregnant Georgia woman being kept on life support, serves slices of birthday cake at a somber event marking what would have been Smith’s 31st birthday on June 16 at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Newkirk said she is calling for prayers for her grandson’s safety and health.

“Right now, we don’t know everything, because it’s so early. So they can’t tell everything,” she said. “Prayer changes things. And we just hope and pray that he’s OK.”

Newkirk told 11Alive that her daughter would be taken off life support Tuesday afternoon.

Smith became a flashpoint in the debate over reproductive rights and Georgia’s six-week abortion ban after family told news outlets that doctors told them that while she had no chance of recovery, Smith’s organs would be kept functioning so as not to violate Georgia law.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has said the law does not require such action.

“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” he said in an earlier statement. “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’”

Newkirk said she is frustrated that Smith sought care for the blood clots that would go on to take her life. She said her daughter was released from the hospital without proper testing.

“All women should have a choice about their bodies. And I think I want people to know that [Adriana] was a nurse, an RN. The same field that she worked in is the same people who failed her. Can you understand what I’m saying? They didn’t go that extra mile, Not even that extra mile. They didn’t even do a CT scan on her. That would have detected it.” Adriana Smith’s birthday cake, June 16 at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Newkirk was on hand Sunday along with other family members and supporters gathered for a somber celebration of Smith’s 31st birthday at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Several dozen people sang happy birthday and released white balloons into the sky. Smith’s mother helped serve slices of pink strawberry cake in the sanctuary as children laughed and shrieked in play behind the pews.

Smith’s family did not speak to the press and did not mention Chance’s birth at the time, but organizers invited members of the media to a rally in the church sanctuary following the private event.

Well-wishers and activists warded away the Georgia heat with “Black Lives Matter” fans as health care and abortion rights advocates spoke in front of an altar stacked with sunflowers and yellow and white roses between pillars of blue and pink birthday balloons.

Among them was Allison Coffman, executive director of the Amplify Georgia Collaborative, a reproductive rights group.

“Adriana Smith did not mean to die. She knew something was wrong, and she went to the hospital, and she was denied care,” Coffman said. “Unfortunately, this is not a unique story. Pregnant people across Georgia are receiving denied, delayed, and distorted care.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: [email protected].