A dead woman who died of the brain was kept alive in Georgia. It is not known if the law of the state required it.

A woman from Georgia declared the death of the brain and continued to live for more than three months because she was pregnant was withdrawn from a fan in June and died, a few days after the doctors delivered her baby in 1 book and 13 ounces per cesarean of emergency. The baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit.

The case drew national attention to the ban on abortion of six weeks of Georgia and its impacts on pregnancy care.

Adriana Smith was subjected to life at the Emory university hospital in Atlanta in February. The 30 -year -old Atlanta nurse was more than eight weeks pregnant and suffered from dangerous complications.

His condition has deteriorated when doctors were trying to save her life, Smith’s mother told Atlanta Wxia’s television station.

“They did a computed tomography, and she had blood clots in her head,” said April Newkirk. “So they had asked me if they could do a procedure to relieve them, and I said yes. And then they reminded me and they said they couldn’t do it.”

She said the doctors said Smith-Brain-Mad and put it into force without consulting it.

“And I am not saying that we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,” said Newkirk, “but what I say is that we should have had a choice.”

Emory Healthcare refused to comment on the details of Smith’s case. After the doctors withdrew Smith from Life Support, Emory published a statement.

“Emory Healthcare’s main priorities continue to be the safety and well-being of patients and families we serve,” said the health system. “Emory Healthcare uses a consensus of clinical experts, medical literature and legal advice to support our providers because they make medical recommendations. Emory Healthcare is legally required to maintain the confidentiality of the protected health information of our patients, which is why we are unable to comment on individual issues and circumstances. ”

In a previous statement, Emory Healthcare said that it was in accordance with “laws on the abortion of Georgia and all other applicable laws”.

Fetal laws on abortion and fetal personality

Georgia HB 481 – Equity and equality, or life, or life, adopted in 2019. Roe c. Wade with his decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization June 24, 2022.

The law prohibits abortion after the point where an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity in an embryo. As a rule, this occurs about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women know they are pregnant.

The law also gave the fetuses the same rights as people.

He says that “children to be born are a class of living people and separate people” and that the state of Georgia “recognizes the advantages of providing complete legal recognition to a child to be born”.

Nineteen states now prohibit abortion or before 19 weeks of gestation; 13 of them have an almost total ban on all abortions of very limited exceptions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a non -partisan research group which supports abortion rights.

Like Georgia, some of these states have built their abortion restrictions around the legal concept of “personality”, thus conferring legal rights and protections to an embryo or a fetus during pregnancy.

Smith’s case has represented a major test on how this type of law will be applied in certain medical situations.

Although they are mainly unified in their opposition to abortion, conservatives and politicians in Georgia do not publicly agree on the scope of the law in cases like Smith.

For example, the attorney general of Georgia, Chris Carr, a republican, said that the law should not restrict the care options in one case like Smith and that the abolition of life would not be equivalent to abandoning a fetus.

“There is nothing in the law on life which obliges health professionals to keep a woman in life after brain death,” said Carr in a statement. “The suppression of life is not an action in order to terminate a pregnancy”. »»

But the senator of the republican state Ed Setzler, who is the author of the Life Act, did not agree. Emory doctors acted appropriately when they put Smith in life, he told the Associated Press.

“I think it is quite suitable for the hospital to do what it can to save the child’s life,” said Setzler. “I think it is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital acts appropriately. ”

Mary Ziegler, professor of law at the University of California-Davis and author of “Personhood: The New Civil War Face Reproduction”, said that the problem of Georgia “is not only a ban on abortion. It is a law of “personality” declaring that a fetus or an embryo is a person, that a “unborn child”, like the law, is a person “.

The legal concept of “personality” has implications beyond abortion care, such as the regulation of fertility treatment, or the potential criminalization of pregnancy complications such as mortinity and miscarriage.

Under the Georgia law, extending personality rights to a fetus modifies how child alimony is calculated. It also allows an embryo or a fetus to be claimed as a dependence on state taxes.

But the idea of the personality is not new, said Ziegler.

“”This is the objective for practically everyone in the anti-abortion movement since the 1960s, “she said.” This does not mean that Republicans like that. This does not necessarily mean that this is what will happen. But there is no daylight between the anti-abortion movement and the movement of the personality. They are the same.

The personality movement has won more ground since the Dobbs Decision in 2022.

In Alabama, after the Supreme Court of the State ruled that the frozen embryos are people, the state legislature had to intervene to allow the fertility clinics to continue their work.

“It is sort of the future that we examine if we go further in the sense of fetal personality,” said Ziegler. “Any Supreme Court of the State, as we have just seen in Alabama, can give them a new life,” she said referring to the laws of personality elsewhere.

Fetal personality laws can delay care

In Georgia, dozens of OB-GYN have declared that the law interferes with patient care-in a state where the maternal mortality rate is one of the worst in the United States and where black women are more than twice as likely to die of a cause of pregnancy than white women.

The members of the Georgia maternal mortality committee – who were then dismissed from the panel – linked the prohibition of state abortion delayed emergency care and at least two women in the state, as Propublica reported.

The provision of the personality has a deep effect on medical care, said Atlanta Ob-Gyn Zoë Lucier-Julian.

“These laws create an environment of fear and try to force us as suppliers to align with the State, as opposed to alignment with our patients that we work so hard to serve,” said Lucier-Julian.

Lucier-Julian said that was what happened to Emory Healthcare in the case of Smith.

Cole Muzio, president of the Frontline Policy Council, a conservative Christian group, said that the law on the abortion of the state should not have affected the way Emory had managed Smith’s care.

“This is a fairly clear case, with regard to the way it is defined in the language of HB 481,” he said. “What these prohibitions are an abortion after a heartbeat. This is the scope of our law. “

“Removing a survival woman is not an abortion. It is not,” said Muzio. “Now, I am incredibly grateful that this child is born even in the midst of tragic circumstances. It is a whole human life that can be lived because of the sacrifice of this mother -in -law.”

A prosecution contesting the law of Georgia and its impact on public health are making their way before the courts. A coalition of doctors, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights and other groups filed the complaint.

Newkirk said her daughter was initially going to another hospital in the Atlanta region to get help with serious headache, had received medication and was returned home, where his symptoms quickly worsened.

“She praised air in her sleep, gargling,” she told Wxia in May. “More than probably, it was blood.”

Now said Newkirk, the family prays so that their grandson can do it after the stress of months of life support.

He fights, she said.

“My grandson can be blind, may not be able to walk, in a wheelchair,” she said. “We don’t know if he will live.”

She added that the family would like him whatever happens.

This article comes from a partnership with Wabe and NPR.