Over the past few days, there have been many headlines about Adriana Smith, a pregnant woman who has been on life support for over three months.
Smith went to the hospital with a severe headache. The hospital negligently sent her home without doing a CT scan, and, therefore, missed multiple blood clots in her brain.
Smith slipped into a coma and, despite medical intervention, was declared brain dead. She has been kept on life support at a Georgia hospital ever since, in the hopes that her son may be born alive.
When the story broke, he was 21 weeks along, now 22 weeks. According to a recent study, babies born at 22 weeks who receive medical treatment have a 41% chance of surviving.
April Newkirk, Smith’s mother, ignited a media firestorm when she spoke to reporters about her daughter’s situation. She expressed grief over Smith’s condition and frustration that doctors didn’t allow her, as Smith’s closest relative, to make the decision whether to disconnect life support.
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Newkirk said, “I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy, but what I’m saying is we should have had a choice.” She claims Smith’s doctors told her they couldn’t disconnect Smith due to Georgia’s pro-life law.
Since then, pro-abortion groups have been loudly screaming about how egregious this case is. Mainstream media outlets have covered the story, all blaming Georgia’s pro-life law for putting a family through hell. Smith’s doctors are being condemned for trying to save her baby.
Even though Newkirk didn’t actually say she wanted life support shut off, pro-abortion activists have been demanding it.
Secular Pro-Life’s Monica Synder wrote a comprehensive article about the case. She cited a systematic review which found that, in cases of maternal brain death, 77% of babies were born alive, and 85% of those born alive were “normal” at 20 months of age (i.e., not disabled).
The women in the study were all over 20 weeks pregnant when they suffered brain death, and were on life support for an average of around seven weeks. Smith was earlier in her pregnancy. It’s possible this may change the odds for her son.
The Law in Question
Snyder discussed how, despite the strident headlines all over the mainstream media, it is likely not Georgia’s abortion ban that influenced Smith’s doctors, but a 15-year-old law that directly addresses pregnant people on life support. Synder writes:
It’s more likely that Georgia’s law regarding withdrawing life support for pregnant patients is the issue. GA Code § 31-32-9 states that doctors can’t withdraw life support from pregnant patients unless both (1) the fetus isn’t viable and (2) the patient had an advanced directive explicitly stating she wanted withdrawal of life-sustaining measures.
Note this code isn’t a result of Dobbs. It was enacted 15 years prior, in 2007. Most states have similar measures, including pro-choice states such as Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
Snyder’s article has a map that shows which states have similar laws.
Other pro-life groups and news sites have published similar articles.
Pro-Abortion Denial and Demonization
If one reads Code 31-32-9, it seems obvious that it’s the reason life support hasn’t been discontinued in Smith’s case. It literally deals with that exact situation. But that hasn’t stopped pro-abortion activists from insisting pro-lifers are wrong.
Jessica Valenti, a pro-abortion activist whose Substack has a large following, wrote:
Now, faced with the incredible suffering [pro-lifers’] policies are inflicting on Americans, the anti-abortion movement is either looking away or shirking blame…
Live Action, for example, put out a release claiming that it’s not the state’s abortion ban forcing the hospital to keep Adriana’s body alive—but other state laws about the withdrawal of life-support. It’s an assertion I’ve seen repeated by close to a dozen other anti-abortion activists and organizations.
She then quotes Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr:
There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death. Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’
One would think that Carr, who is in charge of prosecuting those who break Georgia’s law, would know what it says and means. But Valenti insists he’s lying. The evil pro-lifers, she insists, are covering things up, and we just want to hurt people:
They planned for this. Anti-abortion legislators and activists knew this would happen—they knew their laws would devastate families and lives—and they passed them anyway…
Republicans are running from the expected and planned consequences of their own law because they know that voters are furious. They’re cowards. It’s that simple [emphasis in original].
Jessica Valenti says her audience consists of “journalists, abortion providers, community activists, clinic escorts, policy-makers, and more.”
I don’t want to assume all her readers feel as she does. But to Valenti, and I’d guess to many pro-abortion activists, we pro-lifers aren’t people who have deeply-held beliefs about the value of early human life, we are cardboard cut-out villains who live only to tear apart families, hurt people, and control women.
What About Smith’s Choice?
Several pro-life groups, including Live Action, have pointed out that Smith was pregnant with a wanted child. This wasn’t a woman who was hit by a car on her way to an abortion facility. Smith had chosen life and was, by all accounts, looking forward to bringing her child into the world.
Yet none of the pro-abortion activists commenting on the case seem particularly concerned about what Smith herself would have wanted.
Monica Synder says:
If abortion advocacy were primarily about autonomy, you’d think Smith’s likely perspective would be worth at least considering…
It’s a testament to how very little abortion advocates value unborn children, that even in a case where the woman (1) cannot be harmed by continuing the pregnancy and (2) may very well have wanted her child to live, the framing is outrage that her son’s life is prioritized.
Pro-Choice activists claim decisions about abortion should be left to the pregnant person—the person whose body the baby is developing in. So, one would think their main concern would be determining what Smith would have wanted for her own body and her own baby. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Monica Hesse at the Washington Post
An example of this is Monica Hesse’s piece in The Washington Post:
Hesse describes herself as a “professional feminist.” She summarizes Smith’s case, and writes:
Those events already constitute almost any definition of tragedy; in addition to the baby [Smith] was planning to welcome with her boyfriend, she already had another young son who will now be left without a mother. But what happened next turned the situation from a tragedy into an absolute horror show.
Hesse then quotes Ed Setzler, the Republican senator who sponsored Georgia’s pro-life law:
I think there’s a valuable human life that we have an opportunity to save, and I think it’s the right thing to save it. To suggest otherwise is to declare the child as being other than human.
Hesse responds:
This is hideous. This is hideous. The person who is not currently being treated as human is Adriana Smith. She is being treated as an incubator in the most literal sense of the word, her lifeless body forced to breathe so that it can sustain the struggling baby inside it.
And, yes, I am using the word “baby” instead of “fetus.” I am using that word because I have no doubts that Smith would have used that word. This was a wanted pregnancy and a planned dream of a planned family, and when that is your mindset, you think of the embryo as your baby from the moment you see a flickering heartbeat. [Emphasis in original]
Hesse engages in the same type of magical thinking I see so often, where whether a baby in the womb is a person depends on whether his mother wants him. A wanted fetus/baby is a human being. An unwanted one is just tissue.
There is, of course, no logic to this. But Hesse admits that Smith wanted her baby, and wanted to give birth. She demands that the baby die anyway.
I read a few of the comments. Those commenting all agreed with Hesse and discussed how awful it was that Smith is being kept on life support. There was the usual demonization of those horrible pro-lifers, and much criticism of Republicans on other issues (some of which I agreed with, but little of which was relevant to the actual case).
What Does “Pro-Choice” Mean?
I decided to post my own comment. This is what I wrote:
Can I ask a question to the pro-choice people in these comments?
Doesn’t being pro-choice mean that the pregnant person (and no one else) decides what happens to her pregnancy? That she has control over whether her fetus/baby can use her body? My body my choice?
And didn’t this woman WANT her baby? Didn’t she decide she wanted to give birth? She didn’t get hit by a car on the way to an abortion clinic. She was planning a birth.
Wouldn’t the pro-choice stand be to go with her wishes?
Monica Hesse seems to be saying, Adriana Smith wanted her baby and wanted to give birth. She made a CHOICE to have her baby. But she’s dead now, so what she wanted doesn’t matter.
Now it’s MY choice. I’m going to overrule what she actually wanted and make her pregnancy end, make sure the baby she wanted to live will die, because I think the whole idea of keeping her on a respirator is icky.
It if were me- if I were Adriana, and I was excited and happy to be pregnant, I would WANT my baby born. I would WANT them to keep me on life support. Why would I want my baby to die with me?
Today, I’ve seen many of my friends say the same thing on FB.
I’ve read numerous articles about this case, talking about how horrible it is. And not a single ONE has said anything about what Adriana Smith would have wanted. It’s like nobody cares.
So what does pro-choice actually mean? If the woman whose body the BABY IS IN doesn’t matter? If her wishes don’t matter one bit?
Hesse, can you please explain to me– WHY are you pro-choice? What do you base your beliefs on? Because it doesn’t seem to be the woman’s right to choose. Otherwise, why would you disregard Adriana’s?
Responses to My Comment
There were only a handful of responses, and, not surprisingly, none answered the question.
Two people claimed that the baby would be disabled and wouldn’t have a life worth living. One claimed the family should make the decision. Another said whoever was going to raise the baby should decide. This commenter mentioned the father. No one seems to have bothered to interview him and ask his opinion.
One commenter said that many women choose themselves over their babies when pregnancy threatens their life, but this isn’t relevant. Smith is already brain-dead; the death of her baby won’t save her life. It’s not a choice of one life or another, it’s a choice between one death or two deaths.
The last commenter said that she had once been in a medically induced coma and found the experience so traumatic that she now has a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate Order). If she were pregnant, she said, she would want them to honor the DNR, and would want her baby to die with her. A decision she can make—but what would Smith have wanted?
Hesse herself, unsurprisingly, never responded to my comment.
A Wanted Baby After All
Since I started this article, April Newkirk gave another interview. Despite all the assumptions from pro-abortion people over the past week, Newkirk WANTS her daughter’s baby to live.
She is quoted as saying, “We’re just hoping he makes it.”
She isn’t upset about the life support, it turns out, she is upset that the decision wasn’t hers. It seems she would have made the same decision the doctors did. She just wanted to be the one to decide.
Newkirk says:
We didn’t have a choice or a say about it. We want the baby. That’s a part of my daughter. But the decision should have been left to us — not the state…
[R]ight now, the journey is for baby Chance to survive — and whatever condition God allows him to come here in, we’re going to love him just the same [emphasis mine].
In the original interview that touched off the whole media firestorm, Newkirk never said she didn’t want the baby. That was widely assumed by pro-abortion people, but it appears it was never true.
Pro-Abortion Reactions on GoFundMe
Newkirk has started a GoFundMe. Some of the comments from donors reflect the belief that life support should be turned off.
For example:
[W]hat’s being done to Adriana and her unborn child in the name of “preserving life” is not a miracle. This is not God’s will. It is not divine intervention. It is a misuse of power, a violation of dignity, and a painful delay of sacred closure.
Your daughter’s soul deserves peace. Your grandchild deserves a transition—into life or into spirit—that is led by love, not experimentation.
I believe in a God who honors free will, the natural cycle of life and death, and the sacredness of grief.
And I believe that Adriana’s story is awakening many of us to truths that society tries to bury… Many of us see the truth and are standing with you, not in false hope, but in real love and spiritual clarity.
And:
I pray Justice will prevail and Adriana and her baby will be allowed to rest together. You should have been given a choice.
We should all be rioting outside of that hospital and demanding this broken law be rectified.
The GoFundMe has so far earned over $90,700.
As recently as an hour ago, I was still seeing memes on Facebook declaring that Smith was being kept on life support against her family’s wishes. It remains to be seen if anyone on the pro-abortion side will acknowledge that the family actually wants the baby.
LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.

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