In Adriana Smith case, a clear moral resolution
In May, Secular Pro-Life hosted a livestream discussion on the case of Adriana Smith.
This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner on June 19th, 2025.
Adriana Smith, who was declared brain dead in February while nine weeks pregnant, gave birth this week to a baby boy named Chance, ending a murky ethical situation in which Smith was kept on life support on the premise that her unborn child could survive. According to Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, Chance is expected to be fine despite his premature birth via cesarean section.
Critics of the decision to keep Smith on life support have rushed to blame her care plan on Georgia’s heartbeat law, despite assurances from Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr that “there is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death.”
Rather, Smith was kept on life support due to Georgia’s advanced directive law, which says a pregnant woman can specify ahead of time that she wants to avoid life support if her pregnancy is not yet viable, but no one else is allowed to make the choice to remove life support on her behalf. This is Georgia case law, and it’s a precedent that existed alongside Roe v. Wade for decades.
Advocates have used this case to speak out against Georgia’s anti-abortion laws. However, there is no evidence that Smith even considered ending her pregnancy. Significantly, Newkirk, though frustrated that she did not have a say in her daughter’s life support, explicitly said before Chance was born that he was wanted and she saw him as “a part of my daughter.” This family’s tragic situation should never have been used as a cudgel in the debate surrounding abortion in the United States.
In addition to misinformation about the rationale for Smith being kept on life support, critics of the decision have also said — falsely, it turns out — that Chance would not be able survive or that, in the event that he did survive, his quality of life would be sufficiently low that his life would not be worth living.
These claims ignore medical research, which shows that, in instances where pregnancy continues in the event of a brain-dead mother, 77% of babies are born alive. Of those, 85% had normal health outcomes by the time they were 20 months old.
Wherever you fall on the abortion debate, to care about Chance’s life is to acknowledge that two things can be true at the same time: It’s not that Smith’s life doesn’t matter, it’s that Chance’s life does, too. Now that this baby boy was born, I hope that advocates will be able to put aside their differences and welcome this new life into the world with the joy that every child deserves to be greeted with.
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*Article image credit Visualss on Unsplash.
Great article, Herb!
It makes me think of organ donation. I saw a report about it and even heard a doctor-in-residence talk about it and, here in Canada, it seems that many doctors will pressure patients' families to let them take their loved one's organs before they are even brain dead. The hwhole thing really disturbed me and lead me to remove myself from the donor registry!
So, meanwhile, in Canada, we can't wait till someone is dead to take their organs. Meanwhile, in Georgia, they will keep someone brain dead on life support so that their baby might live and people complain about that? I wonder if its the same people who complain about keeping a a brain-dead pregnant woman on life-support who also justify taking organs from someone who isn't even brain-dead yet?
Makes me wonder if we are truly dealing with an "anti-life" society...
If I were brain dead, I would definitely want to be kept on life support to gestate my baby. Definitely. Maybe they should have women sign something on top of the million doctor protections against wrongful life suits.