Latest news with #AdrianaSmith
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
A baby born to a brain dead mother: this is the horror of abortion bans
On Friday 13 June, a baby was born in an Atlanta hospital to a woman who had been dead for four months. Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black nurse and mother, was declared brain dead in February after blood clots formed in her brain. Legally, and by all meaningful measures, she was dead then: the woman who loved her family, laughed with her friends, comforted her son, helped her colleagues and cared for her patients was gone then, and was never coming back. But the state of Georgia, and the administrators of the hospital where she was declared dead, kept her corpse in a state of artificial animation for months. That's because when Smith went to the hospital in February complaining of a headache, and later became unresponsive, she was about eight weeks pregnant. According to her family, doctors at Emory hospital, in Georgia, told the family that the state's abortion ban required them to maintain the regimen that falsely animated their daughter's corpse so that the fetus inside her could continue to grow. The Georgia state attorney general denies that the state's abortion ban required this abuse of Smiths's body. But other supporters of the law disagree. The result, either way, was the same: in deference to a law that created genuine ambiguity about what freedoms Smith's doctors and family had in the wake of her death, a woman who did nothing other than be pregnant was denied the right to rest in peace. Brain death is distinct from a vegetative state or a coma; it is the complete and permanent loss of the function of the entire brain, including the loss of the function of the brain stem, which is needed for basic organ functions like the reflexive intake of breath and the beating of the heart. There is no chance of recovery; usually, the invasive life support required to sustain the body of a brain dead patient is administered only long enough for the patient's family to say goodbye. That's because what life support does to a patient's body, in addition to being medically futile, is also extreme and invasive. The artificial ventilator that acts as a bellows, pushing air in and out of the dead lungs, involves tubes inserted through the nose and throat, extending into the stomach and windpipe. These tubes, in Smith's case, were tools of the state, extending the force of the law into the inside of her corpse. It was the state, via these machines, that pumped her heart, contracted her lungs, and pushed blood into the dead tissues of her body, so that cells could continue dividing inside her uterus. It was the state that used these machines to desecrate Smith's corpse – to turn it from the vessel for a beautiful person, the nurse and mother, into an object that symbolized women's degradation and Smith's disposability. What should have been a respected artifact of a loved person became a macabre marionette, pushed and pulled by a state apparatus that sees all women's bodies as mere means to its own ends. Last month, the fetus was cut out of her corpse prematurely; presumably, doctors did not think that the dead body could sustain a pregnancy any longer. Physicians working on Smith's case told her family that as a result of gestating inside a dead uterus, the resulting child could experience health complications ranging from blindness to the inability to walk. The infant that was extracted from the dead woman, a baby boy, weighs less than 2lbs, and is currently in neonatal intensive care. The family has named him Chance. The desecration of Smith's corpse by Emory University hospital and the state of Georgia is a grim reminder of how little women's personhood is esteemed in post-Dobbs America. But Adriana is not the first woman to have her dead body abused this way. In 2013, a 33-year-old Texas woman, Marlise Muñoz, was declared brain dead after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Because she was 14 weeks pregnant, the hospital argued that the state of Texas required her to be kept on life support, solely so that her corpse could be used to continue the cultivation of the fetus. Her husband, Erick, sued to have her removed from life support so that he could bury his wife and grieve in peace; still, the hospital artificially animated her corpse until a judge ordered them to stop. Marlise's family would tell reporters that as they visited her body in the hospital, they could smell her flesh decaying. There is something particularly unsettling about seeing a corpse: the absence of the person who was once there is so conspicuous that it makes the body uncanny. That the body is not the person becomes clear the moment you see a body without a human person in it. And yet the body is the instrument and vessel of the person who animates it, and as such it commands to be treated with dignity, with a kind of reverence, with the respect you would give to a human being. Abortion bans disregard this: they appropriate the body for the ends of the state, indifferent to the will or the dignity of the person who lives in it. Rape functions this way, too—using a body for an end, without deferring to the person who inhabits it. In both cases—rape and abortion bans – the body of a living person is reduced to an instrument for someone else's use. That contrast – between the dignity that a human being's body demands and the instrumentalization with which it is treated – is what supplies abortion bans and sexual violence with their moral horror. They treat living people as mere objects. In that sense, a corpse might be the perfect vehicle for the anti-abortion movement's agenda: it is a female instrument without the annoying encumbrance of a female person. But Adriana Smith was a person; so was Marlise Muñoz. They were not objects, or instruments; they were people endowed with dignity and rights. In life and in death, they deserved better. Every woman does. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
A baby born to a brain dead mother: this is the horror of abortion bans
On Friday 13 June, a baby was born in an Atlanta hospital to a woman who had been dead for four months. Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black nurse and mother, was declared brain dead in February after blood clots formed in her brain. Legally, and by all meaningful measures, she was dead then: the woman who loved her family, laughed with her friends, comforted her son, helped her colleagues and cared for her patients was gone then, and was never coming back. But the state of Georgia, and the administrators of the hospital where she was declared dead, kept her corpse in a state of artificial animation for months. That's because when Smith went to the hospital in February complaining of a headache, and later became unresponsive, she was about eight weeks pregnant. According to her family, doctors at Emory hospital, in Georgia, told the family that the state's abortion ban required them to maintain the regimen that falsely animated their daughter's corpse so that the fetus inside her could continue to grow. The Georgia state attorney general denies that the state's abortion ban required this abuse of Smiths's body. But other supporters of the law disagree. The result, either way, was the same: in deference to a law that created genuine ambiguity about what freedoms Smith's doctors and family had in the wake of her death, a woman who did nothing other than be pregnant was denied the right to rest in peace. Brain death is distinct from a vegetative state or a coma; it is the complete and permanent loss of the function of the entire brain, including the loss of the function of the brain stem, which is needed for basic organ functions like the reflexive intake of breath and the beating of the heart. There is no chance of recovery; usually, the invasive life support required to sustain the body of a brain dead patient is administered only long enough for the patient's family to say goodbye. That's because what life support does to a patient's body, in addition to being medically futile, is also extreme and invasive. The artificial ventilator that acts as a bellows, pushing air in and out of the dead lungs, involves tubes inserted through the nose and throat, extending into the stomach and windpipe. These tubes, in Smith's case, were tools of the state, extending the force of the law into the inside of her corpse. It was the state, via these machines, that pumped her heart, contracted her lungs, and pushed blood into the dead tissues of her body, so that cells could continue dividing inside her uterus. It was the state that used these machines to desecrate Smith's corpse – to turn it from the vessel for a beautiful person, the nurse and mother, into an object that symbolized women's degradation and Smith's disposability. What should have been a respected artifact of a loved person became a macabre marionette, pushed and pulled by a state apparatus that sees all women's bodies as mere means to its own ends. Last month, the fetus was cut out of her corpse prematurely; presumably, doctors did not think that the dead body could sustain a pregnancy any longer. Physicians working on Smith's case told her family that as a result of gestating inside a dead uterus, the resulting child could experience health complications ranging from blindness to the inability to walk. The infant that was extracted from the dead woman, a baby boy, weighs less than 2lbs, and is currently in neonatal intensive care. The family has named him Chance. The desecration of Smith's corpse by Emory University hospital and the state of Georgia is a grim reminder of how little women's personhood is esteemed in post-Dobbs America. But Adriana is not the first woman to have her dead body abused this way. In 2013, a 33-year-old Texas woman, Marlise Muñoz, was declared brain dead after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Because she was 14 weeks pregnant, the hospital argued that the state of Texas required her to be kept on life support, solely so that her corpse could be used to continue the cultivation of the fetus. Her husband, Erick, sued to have her removed from life support so that he could bury his wife and grieve in peace; still, the hospital artificially animated her corpse until a judge ordered them to stop. Marlise's family would tell reporters that as they visited her body in the hospital, they could smell her flesh decaying. There is something particularly unsettling about seeing a corpse: the absence of the person who was once there is so conspicuous that it makes the body uncanny. That the body is not the person becomes clear the moment you see a body without a human person in it. And yet the body is the instrument and vessel of the person who animates it, and as such it commands to be treated with dignity, with a kind of reverence, with the respect you would give to a human being. Abortion bans disregard this: they appropriate the body for the ends of the state, indifferent to the will or the dignity of the person who lives in it. Rape functions this way, too—using a body for an end, without deferring to the person who inhabits it. In both cases—rape and abortion bans – the body of a living person is reduced to an instrument for someone else's use. That contrast – between the dignity that a human being's body demands and the instrumentalization with which it is treated – is what supplies abortion bans and sexual violence with their moral horror. They treat living people as mere objects. In that sense, a corpse might be the perfect vehicle for the anti-abortion movement's agenda: it is a female instrument without the annoying encumbrance of a female person. But Adriana Smith was a person; so was Marlise Muñoz. They were not objects, or instruments; they were people endowed with dignity and rights. In life and in death, they deserved better. Every woman does. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
News24
02-07-2025
- Health
- News24
Brain-dead mom who gave birth while on life support is laid to rest
After four months on life support, Adriana Smith has been laid to rest in Georgia in the US. The 31-year-old nurse was removed from life support after the birth of her son, Chance. She had been kept alive to carry the pregnancy to term because under Georgia's abortion ban it could not be terminated even though she was brain-dead. Friends and family paid tribute to Adriana at her funeral, remembering her as a kind soul. 'I just want to say that I'm thankful for the time I spent with her, and I'm thankful for everything that she's taught me. Her love, her kindness, her wisdom,' her sister, Naya, said in her speech. 'Family meant everything to her,' Naya added. 'So I hope that I can follow in her footsteps. Besides that, I'm thankful for her.' The Atlanta Metropolitan Nursing Honor Guard paid tribute to Adriana by formally releasing her from her nursing duties. A guard member rang a bell while delivering the traditional 'final call of duty' in her memory. Adriana's newborn son, Chance, remains in a neo-natal intensive care unit after being born via C-section. He was delivered at 25 weeks gestation and weighed in at 0,8kg. Adriana's family has launched an online fundraiser to support the baby and her other son, Chase (7). The state of Georgia has strict abortion laws and the hospital that treated Adriana said she had to remain on life support until her baby was developed enough to be delivered. The state's 'heartbeat law', which prohibits termination once cardiac activity is detected in a foetus – usually at around six weeks – is one of America's strictest regulations. The law was implemented after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 – a decision that took away a woman's constitutional right to abortion in several states. The heartbeat ruling grants legal rights to foetuses and shifts decision-making authority away from families to the authorities, leaving relatives powerless over medical choices they'd typically make for their loved ones. Adriana's mom, April Newkirk, previously said that baby Chance is expected to be okay, but added 'he's just fighting'. 'We just want prayers for him.' On taking her daughter off life support after Chance's birth, April said, 'I'm her mother, I shouldn't be burying my daughter, my daughter should be burying me.' Adriana was declared brain-dead in February after suffering blood clots in her brain. Her family feared her baby could face serious health challenges, including blindness or difficulty walking, as a result. READ MORE| Brain-dead pregnant woman is kept alive until her baby can be delivered due to US abortion law The decision to keep her on life support 'should have been left up to the family', her mother said previously. Legal experts have warned that Georgia's heartbeat law effectively places medical decisions in the hands of lawmakers rather than families and physicians. 'Once that power is yielded, pregnancy becomes a scary loss of dignity and humanity for the pregnant person,' says Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel at If/When/How, a reproductive justice non-profit. Critics argue Adriana was essentially being used as an incubator without her consent, with her bodily autonomy overridden by abortion restrictions. 'We're seeing this pregnant person being used as a means to an end in a really, really heartbreaking way,' says Jess Pezley, a senior attorney at Compassion & Choices, a group that advocates for access to medical aid in dying. Georgia officials have offered contradictory interpretations of the law. The attorney general's office claims the abortion law doesn't require keeping a brain-dead patient on life support, while Republican state lawmakers say the law had absolutely nothing to do with Adriana's situation.
The Independent
01-07-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Expert says Adriana Smith's case goes beyond abortion politics
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus. On June 13, 2025, her premature baby, named Chance, was born via cesarean section at 25 weeks. Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple blood clots in her brain. Her story gained public attention when her mother criticized doctors' decision to keep her on a ventilator without the family's consent. Smith's mother has said that doctors told the family the decision was made to align with Georgia 's LIFE Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and bolsters the legal standing of fetal personhood. A statement released by the hospital also cites Georgia's abortion law. 'I'm not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,' Smith's mother told a local television station. 'But I'm saying we should have had a choice.' The LIFE Act is one of several state laws that have been passed across the U.S. since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision invalidated constitutional protections for abortion. Although Georgia's attorney general denied that the LIFE Act applied to Smith, there's little doubt that it invites ethical and legal uncertainty when a woman dies while pregnant. Smith's case has swiftly become the focus of a reproductive rights political firestorm characterized by two opposing viewpoints. For some, it reflects demeaning governmental overreach that quashes women's bodily autonomy. For others, it illustrates the righteous sacrifice of motherhood. In my work as a gender and technology studies scholar, I have cataloged and studied postmortem pregnancies like Smith's since 2016. In my view, Smith's story doesn't fit straightforwardly into abortion politics. Instead, it points to the need for a more nuanced ethical approach that does not frame a mother and child as adversaries in a medical, legal or political context. Birth after death For centuries, Catholic dogma and Western legal precedent have mandated immediate cesarean section when a pregnant woman died after quickening, the point when fetal movement becomes discernible. But technological advances now make it possible sometimes for a fetus to continue gestating in place when the mother is brain-dead, or 'dead by neurological criteria'– a widely accepted definition of death that first emerged in the 1950s. The first brain death during pregnancy in which the fetus was delivered after time on life support, more accurately called organ support, occurred in 1981. The process is extraordinarily intensive and invasive because the loss of brain function impedes many physiological processes. Health teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, must stabilize the bodies of 'functionally decapitated' pregnant women to buy more time for fetal development. This requires vital organ support, ventilation, nutritional supplements, antibiotics and constant monitoring. Outcomes are highly uncertain. Smith's 112-day stint on organ support ranks third in length for a postmortem pregnancy, with the longest being 123 days. Hers is also the earliest ever gestational age from which the procedure has been attempted. Because time on organ support can vary widely, and because there is no established minimum fetal age considered too early to intervene, a fetus could theoretically be deemed viable at any point in pregnancy. Postmortem pregnancy as gender-based violence Over the past 50 years, critics of postmortem pregnancy have argued that it constitutes gender-based violence and violates bodily integrity in ways that organ donation does not. Some have compared it with Nazi pronatalist policies. Others have attributed the practice to systemic sexism and racism in medicine. Postmortem pregnancy can also compound intimate partner violence by giving brain-dead women's murderers decision-making authority when they are the fetus's next of kin. Fetal personhood laws complicate end-of-life decision-making in ways that many consider violent, too. As I have seen in my own research, when the fetus is considered a legal person, women's wishes may be assumed, debated in court or committee, or set aside entirely, nearly always in favor of the fetus. From the perspective of reproductive rights advocates, postmortem pregnancy is the bottom of a slippery slope down which anti-abortion sentiment has led America. It obliterates women's autonomy, pitting living and dead women against doctors, legislators and sometimes their own families, and weaponizing their own fetuses against them. A medical perspective on rights Viewed through a medical lens, however, postmortem pregnancy is not violent or violating, but an act of repair. Although care teams have responsibilities to both mother and fetus, a pregnant woman's brain death means she cannot be physically harmed and her rights cannot be violated to the same degree as a fetus with the potential for life. Medical practitioners are conditioned to prioritize life over death, motivating a commitment to salvage something from a tragedy and try to partially restore a family. The high-stakes world of emergency medicine makes protecting life reflexive and medical interventions automatic. Once fetal life is detected, as one hospital spokesperson put it in a 1976 news article in The Boston Globe, 'What else could you do?' This response does not necessarily stem from conscious sexism or anti-abortion sentiment, but from reverence for vulnerable patients. If physicians declare a pregnant woman brain-dead, patienthood often automatically transfers to the fetus needing rescue. No matter its age and despite its survival being dependent on machines, just like its mother, the fetus is entirely animate. Who or what counts as a legal person with privileges and protections might be a political or philosophical determination, but life is a matter of biological fact and within the doctors' purview. An ethics of anti-opposition Both of the above perspectives have validity, but neither accounts for postmortem pregnancy's ethical and biological complexity. First, setting mother against fetus, with the rights of one endangering the rights of the other, does not match pregnancy's lived reality of 'two bodies, sutured,' as the cultural scholar Lauren Berlant put it. Even the Supreme Court recognized this entangled duality in their 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which established both constitutional protections for abortion and a governmental obligation to protect fetal life. Whether a fetus is considered a legal person or not, they wrote, pregnant women and fetuses 'cannot be isolated in their privacy' – meaning that reproductive rights issues must strike a balance, however tenuous, between maternal and fetal interests. To declare postmortem pregnancy unequivocally violent or a loss of the 'right to choose' fails to recognize the complexity of choice in a highly politicized medical landscape. Second, maternal-fetal competition muddles the right course of action. In the U.S., competent patients are not compelled to engage in medical care they would rather avoid, even if it kills them, or to stay on life support to preserve organs for donation. But when a fetus is treated as an independent patient, exceptions could be made to those medical standards if the fetus's interests override the mother's. For example, pregnancy disrupts standard determination of death. To protect the fetus, care teams increasingly skip a necessary diagnostic for brain death called apnea testing, which involves momentarily removing the ventilator to test the respiratory centers of the brain stem. In these cases, maternal brain death cannot be confirmed until after delivery. Multiple instances of vaginal deliveries after brain death also remain unexplained, given that the brain coordinates mechanisms of vaginal labor. All in all, it's not always clear women in these cases are entirely dead. Ultimately, women like Adriana Smith and their fetuses are inseparable and persist in a technologically defined state of in-betweenness. I'd argue that postmortem pregnancies, therefore, need new bioethical standards that center women's beliefs about their bodies and a dignified death. This might involve recognizing pregnancy's unique ambiguities in advance directives, questioning default treatment pathways that may require harm to be done to one in order to save another, or considering multiple definitions of clinical and legal death. In my view, it is possible to adapt our ethical standards in a way that honors all beings in these exceptional circumstances, without privileging either 'choice' or 'life,' mother or fetus.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Keeping brain-dead pregnant women on life support raises ethical issues that go beyond abortion politics
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus. On June 13, 2025, her premature baby, named Chance, was born via cesarean section at 25 weeks. Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple blood clots in her brain. Her story gained public attention when her mother criticized doctors' decision to keep her on a ventilator without the family's consent. Smith's mother has said that doctors told the family the decision was made to align with Georgia's LIFE Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and bolsters the legal standing of fetal personhood. A statement released by the hospital also cites Georgia's abortion law. 'I'm not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,' Smith's mother told a local television station. 'But I'm saying we should have had a choice.' The LIFE Act is one of several state laws that have passed across the U.S. since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision invalidated constitutional protections for abortion. Although Georgia's attorney general denied that the LIFE Act applied to Smith, there's little doubt that it invites ethical and legal uncertainty when a woman dies while pregnant. Smith's case has swiftly become the focus of a reproductive rights political firestorm characterized by two opposing viewpoints. For some, it reflects demeaning governmental overreach that quashes women's bodily autonomy. For others it illustrates the righteous sacrifice of motherhood. In my work as a gender and technology studies scholar, I have cataloged and studied postmortem pregnancies like Smith's since 2016. In my view, Smith's story doesn't fit straightforwardly into abortion politics. Instead, it points to the need for a more nuanced ethical approach that does not frame a mother and child as adversaries in a medical, legal or political context. For centuries, Catholic dogma and Western legal precedent have mandated immediate cesarean section when a pregnant woman died after quickening, the point when fetal movement becomes discernible. But technological advances now make it possible sometimes for a fetus to continue gestating in place when the mother is brain-dead, or 'dead by neurological criteria'– a widely accepted definition of death that first emerged in the 1950s. The first brain death during pregnancy in which the fetus was delivered after time on life support, more accurately called organ support, occurred in 1981. The process is extraordinarily intensive and invasive, because the loss of brain function impedes many physiological processes. Health teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, must stabilize the bodies of 'functionally decapitated' pregnant women to buy more time for fetal development. This requires vital organ support, ventilation, nutritional supplements, antibiotics and constant monitoring. Outcomes are highly uncertain. Smith's 112-day stint on organ support ranks third in length for a postmortem pregnancy, with the longest being 123 days. Hers is also the earliest ever gestational age from which the procedure has been attempted. Because time on organ support can vary widely, and because there is no established minimum fetal age considered too early to intervene, a fetus could theoretically be deemed viable at any point in pregnancy. Over the past 50 years, critics of postmortem pregnancy have argued that it constitutes gender-based violence and violates bodily integrity in ways that organ donation does not. Some have compared it with Nazi pronatalist policies. Others have attributed the practice to systemic sexism and racism in medicine. Postmortem pregnancy can also compound intimate partner violence by giving brain-dead women's murderers decision-making authority when they are the fetus's next of kin. Fetal personhood laws complicate end-of-life decision-making in ways that many consider violent too. As I have seen in my own research, when the fetus is considered a legal person, women's wishes may be assumed, debated in court or committee, or set aside entirely, nearly always in favor of the fetus. From the perspective of reproductive rights advocates, postmortem pregnancy is the bottom of a slippery slope down which anti-abortion sentiment has led America. It obliterates women's autonomy, pitting living and dead women against doctors, legislators and sometimes their own families, and weaponizing their own fetuses against them. Viewed through a medical lens, however, postmortem pregnancy is not violent or violating, but an act of repair. Although care teams have responsibilities to both mother and fetus, a pregnant woman's brain death means she cannot be physically harmed and her rights cannot be violated to the same degree as a fetus with the potential for life. Medical practitioners are conditioned to prioritize life over death, motivating a commitment to salvage something from a tragedy and try to partially restore a family. The high-stakes world of emergency medicine makes protecting life reflexive and medical interventions automatic. Once fetal life is detected, as one hospital spokesperson put it in a 1976 news article in The Boston Globe, 'What else could you do?' This response does not necessarily stem from conscious sexism or anti-abortion sentiment, but from reverence for vulnerable patients. If physicians declare a pregnant woman brain-dead, patienthood often automatically transfers to the fetus needing rescue. No matter its age and despite its survival being dependent on machines, just like its mother, the fetus is entirely animate. Who or what counts as a legal person with privileges and protections might be a political or philosophical determination, but life is a matter of biological fact and within the doctors' purview. Both of the above perspectives have validity, but neither accounts for postmortem pregnancy's ethical and biological complexity. First, setting mother against fetus, with the rights of one endangering the rights of the other, does not match pregnancy's lived reality of 'two bodies, sutured,' as the cultural scholar Lauren Berlant put it. Even the Supreme Court recognized this entangled duality in their 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which established both constitutional protections for abortion and a governmental obligation to protect fetal life. Whether a fetus is considered a legal person or not, they wrote, pregnant women and fetuses 'cannot be isolated in their privacy' – meaning that reproductive rights issues must strike a balance, however tenuous, between maternal and fetal interests. To declare postmortem pregnancy unequivocally violent or a loss of the 'right to choose' fails to recognize the complexity of choice in a highly politicized medical landscape. Second, maternal-fetal competition muddles the right course of action. In the U.S., competent patients are not compelled to engage in medical care they would rather avoid, even if it kills them, or to stay on life support to preserve organs for donation. But when a fetus is treated as an independent patient, exceptions could be made to those medical standards if the fetus's interests override the mother's. For example, pregnancy disrupts standard determination of death. To protect the fetus, care teams increasingly skip a necessary diagnostic for brain death called apnea testing, which involves momentarily removing the ventilator to test the respiratory centers of the brain stem. In these cases, maternal brain death cannot be confirmed until after delivery. Multiple instances of vaginal deliveries after brain death also remain unexplained, given that the brain coordinates mechanisms of vaginal labor. All in all, it's not always clear women in these cases are entirely dead. Ultimately, women like Adriana Smith and their fetuses are inseparable and persist in a technologically defined state of in-betweenness. I'd argue that postmortem pregnancies, therefore, need new bioethical standards that center women's beliefs about their bodies and a dignified death. This might involve recognizing pregnancy's unique ambiguities in advance directives, questioning default treatment pathways that may require harm be done to one in order to save another, or considering multiple definitions of clinical and legal death. In my view, it is possible to adapt our ethical standards in a way that honors all beings in these exceptional circumstances, without privileging either 'choice' or 'life,' mother or fetus. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Lindsey Breitwieser, Hollins University Read more: Fetal personhood rulings could nullify a pregnant patient's wishes for end-of-life care American womanhood is not what it used to be − understanding the backlash to Dobbs v. Jackson 'A revolutionary ruling – and not just for abortion': A Supreme Court scholar explains the impact of Dobbs This research was supported by a grant from The Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
