Case of brain-dead pregnant woman kept on life support in Georgia raises tricky questions

05/19/2025

ATLANTA (AP) — The case of a pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead and has been kept on life support for three months has given rise to complicated questions about abortion law and whether a fetus is a person.

Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother, was about two months pregnant on Feb. 19 when she was declared brain dead, according to an online fundraising page started by her mother. Doctors said Georgia’s strict anti-abortion law requires that she remain on life support until the fetus has developed enough to be delivered, her mother wrote.

The law, one of a wave of measures enacted in conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, restricts abortion once cardiac activity is detected and gives personhood rights to a fetus.

Smith’s mother says it has left her family without a say in a difficult situation, and with her due date still months away, the family is left wondering whether the baby will be born with disabilities or can even survive. Some activists, many of them Black women like Smith, say it raises issues of racial equity.

By KATE BRUMBACK, SUDHIN THANAWALA and GEOFF MULVIHILL May 17 2025

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