Gold dome of the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta. / Credit: Rob Hainer/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, May 21, 2025 / 17:33 pm (CNA).

In response to national outcry over the case of Adriana Smith, a brain-dead pregnant woman on life support, the Georgia attorney general’s office released a statement clarifying that the state’s heartbeat law, which prohibits abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, does not require Smith be kept alive.

“There is nothing in the LIFE act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” said the statement, issued by Attorney General Chris Carr’s office last week.  

Quoting the law itself, the statement continued: “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’”

Doctors at Emory University Hospital declared Smith, who was nine weeks pregnant at the time, brain dead in February after she was diagnosed with multiple blood clots in her brain. 

According to Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, doctors told her that Georgia’s law protecting unborn children with a heartbeat required that they keep Smith on life support until her child could be safely delivered.

Echoing the attorney general’s statement, a spokesperson for the Georgia state House told the Washington Post this week that the LIFE Act is “completely irrelevant” regarding Smith’s situation, saying “any implication otherwise is just another gross mischaracterization of the intent of this legislation by liberal media outlets and left-wing activists.”

Although he supports the hospital’s decision to keep the unborn child alive until viability, state Sen. Ed Stetzer, the original sponsor of the LIFE Act, told CNA last week that “the removal of the life support of the mother is a separate act” from an abortion.

David Gibbs III, a lawyer at the National Center for Life and Liberty who was a lead attorney in the Terri Schiavo case, said he thinks there may be a misunderstanding about which law the hospital is invoking in Smith’s case. Georgia’s Advance Directive for Health Care Act may be the law at play here, Gibbs told CNA.

Section 31-32-9 of that law states that if a woman is pregnant and “in a terminal condition or state of permanent unconsciousness” and the unborn child is viable, certain life-sustaining procedures may not be withdrawn.

“The majority of states have advance directive laws with a pregnancy exclusion,” Gibbs explained. 

“When in doubt, the law should err on the side of life,” he said.

A pregnancy exclusion means that if a patient is pregnant, the law prioritizes the survival of her unborn child over her stated wishes in an advance directive if there is a conflict between her wishes and the child’s well-being.

Several Democratic Georgia legislators have continued to demand the attorney general provide clarification of the heartbeat law, and some are calling for its repeal.

In a letter sent to the attorney general’s office last Friday, state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes characterized the hospital’s decision to keep Smith on life support to sustain the life of her unborn child as “inhumane” and called it “a grotesque distortion of medical ethics and human decency.” She asked the attorney general to “speak clearly and candidly” about the applicability of the law. 

In a statement released Monday, state Reps. Kim Schofield, Viola Davis, and Sandra Scott called Smith’s case “barbaric” and cited the “emotional torture” her family is enduring. They are calling for the repeal of Georgia’s heartbeat law, even though Carr made it clear on Friday that the LIFE Act does not require Smith be kept alive.

Joe Zalot, an ethicist and director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA Wednesday: “I don’t know what’s barbaric or inhumane about seeking to sustain the life of the unborn child, who is a fellow human being.”

For its part, Emory Healthcare released a statement saying that while it cannot comment on particular patients, it “uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualized treatment recommendations in compliance with Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.”

“Our top priorities continue to be the safety and well-being of the patients we serve,” the statement continued.

Newkirk told 11Alive last week that Smith was transferred to Emory Midtown recently because she was told that the hospital is better at providing obstetric care.

On a GoFundMe page Newkirk has set up since the story broke last week, she said she was saddened to have “no say so regarding [Smith’s] lifeless body and unborn child,” who, she claimed, “will suffer disease which will lead to major disabilities.” 

Newkirk could not be reached for comment by time of publication.