Woman, 30, medically declared brain-dead is pregnant while on life support

Daily Mail​

26-05-2025

A 30-year-old woman on life support in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, is expecting a baby.
a local nurse, was nine weeks pregnant when she went to a hospital in February seeking treatment for intense headaches.
Doctors sent her home with some medication but they didn't conduct a CT scan. The next morning she woke up struggling to breathe.
The hospital discovered the mother-of-one had blood clots in her brain and, after an unsuccessful surgery to relieve the pressure, she was declared brain-dead.
Critics argue the situation has turned from tragedy into 'an absolute horror show' after Emory University Hospital – where the nurse previously worked – informed Adriana's family that, although she was legally dead, she was not allowed to die.
The apparent reason, according to the hospital's spokesman, is that it's acting 'in compliance with Georgia's abortion laws'.
As such, the hospital has reportedly demanded Adriana be kept alive on breathing and feeding tubes until specialists have determined the male foetus is sufficiently developed to be delivered – by caesarean section – as a baby boy. That is scheduled to occur in early August.
Removing her from life-support until that time, health officials reportedly believe, would violate Georgia's strict anti-abortion laws – which prohibit termination once a foetal heartbeat is detected, typically at around six weeks.
The state's controversial law, the Living Infants Fairness And Equality (LIFE) Act, which was dubbed the 'Heartbeat Bill' does contain an exception to save the life of the mother. But that doesn't apply to Adriana, as her life is beyond saving.
Her family say they haven't made up their minds whether to switch off her life-support systems but, at this moment, are deeply upset that the decision has been taken out of their hands by faceless bureaucrats.
'This is torture for me,' her distraught mother April Newkirk told local TV station 11Alive. 'I see my daughter breathing by the ventilator but she's not there.'
She revealed that the baby - who the family have named 'Chance' – has hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain. Even if he survives the pregnancy (which is increasingly uncertain), he could be born with severe disabilities.
Newkirk added: 'He may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he's born. Right now, the journey is for baby "Chance" to survive. Whatever condition God allows him to come here in, we're going to love him just the same.'
While Georgia's 'Heartbeat Law' was narrowly passed in 2019, it did not come into effect until three years later after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade, the 1973 case that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
Three other states have similar abortion bans that come into force around the six-week mark and 12 states bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy.
Legal experts are in little doubt what is worrying Adriana's healthcare provider – a part of the Georgia law that gives foetuses legal rights.
If Adriana and the foetus are two patients with separate legal rights, even if the mother dies, the hospital might have a legal obligation to keep the foetus alive.
But doctors anticipate there will be more problems for the child, pointing out life-support systems are not designed for long-term treatment of brain-dead patients.
With blood no longer running to the mother's brain, the organ is starting to decompose.
'The chance of there being a healthy newborn at the end of this is very, very small,' said Steven Ralston, the director of the maternal foetal medicine division at George Washington University in Washington DC.
The medical situation and apparent helplessness of Adriana's family has sparked the ire of the 'pro-choice', pro-abortion lobby, with critics saying the case demonstrates a 'pro-life' philosophy that ends up being anything but humane.
Predictably, some opponents have likened Georgia to Gilead, the fictional U.S. in Margaret Atwood's chilling novel The Handmaid's Tale.
In this dystopian world, much of the U.S. is ruled by a brutal Christian fundamentalist government which – to tackle a severe infertility crisis – forces the few women who can conceive to devote their lives to producing offspring for ruling men.
While drawing an analogy with the book is once again a fairly extreme view, critics are correct in saying the state's leaders should have seen this coming.
Legal experts say the vague way anti-abortion laws are written will naturally make doctors and hospitals worried about facing criminal charges.
And they should have foreseen, too, how the movement to establish so-called 'foetal personhood' – whereby a foetus should have legal rights, including the right to life – would inevitably end up pitting the rights of the mother against those of their unborn child.
Now, keen to avert a public relations crisis that could lose them votes in a key swing state, even some of Georgia's conservatives are fighting back by claiming that the state's LIFE law is being misinterpreted.
The state's Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, declared last week that the law does not require doctors to keep brain-dead patients alive because turning off the life support 'is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy'.
Others disagree, however, and say the hospital has taken the correct – and humane – course.
'While Adriana can no longer speak for herself, her son's life still matters. Her doctors are doing the right thing by treating him as a unique patient,' said Students For Life Of America, a national anti-abortion group which has even launched a campaign to raise money to help Adriana's family.
Georgia state Senator Ed Setzler, who sponsored the state's abortion crackdown, has agreed, saying: '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.
'This is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life.'