In Georgia, 30-year-old nurse and mother, Adriana Smith, has become the latest victim of extremist abortion laws that dehumanize women under the guise of protecting life. After suffering a massive brain hemorrhage while nine weeks pregnant, Smith was declared brain-dead in February. But due to Georgia’s restrictive six-week abortion ban, she has remained on life support for months, solely to allow the fetus to potentially reach viability.
Her family, devastated and powerless, was told by doctors that ending life-sustaining treatment was not an option because of the state’s abortion law. Smith’s body, now legally dead, continues to be maintained.
Georgia’s 2019 “heartbeat law,” known as H.B. 481, bans abortion as soon as fetal cardiac activity can be detected, often before many people even realize they are pregnant. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, the law went into effect, dramatically limiting reproductive freedom across the state. The law contains vague language and no clear guidance for situations like Smith’s, where the pregnant patient is already deceased but the pregnancy remains viable.
The law does allow for abortion in cases where the pregnant person’s life is at risk, but in Smith’s case, doctors interpreted the law to mean that the death of the woman does not justify ending the pregnancy.
The consequences are serious. As Smith’s mother told reporters, “My daughter is gone. And now we’re forced to sit here and hope a 21-week-old fetus survives inside a dead woman’s body.”
This is not an isolated tragedy. It’s part of a broader right-wing movement that uses state power to control women’s bodies and force pregnancies under any circumstances. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, states like Georgia have advanced abortion bans that redefine personhood and criminalize care—even in emergencies. Georgia’s H.B. 481, for example, recognizes embryos as “natural persons,” creating legal confusion that endangers both patients and providers.
Across the country, anti-abortion lawmakers have introduced more than 1,000 abortion restrictions since 2021, including bans on medication abortion, mandatory reporting requirements, and laws that allow civil lawsuits against providers and helpers. These policies are not about protecting life—they are about enforcing a coercive model of forced motherhood.
Meanwhile, clinics are closing or turning away patients experiencing miscarriage complications or nonviable pregnancies out of fear of prosecution. In states like Texas, physicians have delayed care until patients develop sepsis or other life-threatening conditions, leading to lasting harm and, in some cases, death. These are not unintended consequences, they are the foreseeable outcomes of an agenda that values ideology over bodily autonomy.
Adriana Smith’s story highlights the urgent need to reframe the national conversation away from abortion as a legal technicality and toward reproductive justice as a human right. Reproductive justice, a framework developed by Black feminist activists, demands not only the right to have an abortion, but the right to bodily autonomy, the right to have children if and when we choose, and the right to raise families in safe, healthy environments.
Smith was denied all of these. She cannot speak for herself, and now her body is being used as a vessel for forced birth, despite being legally dead.
If policymakers were truly invested in protecting life, they would ensure access to comprehensive reproductive care, not criminalize it. They would pass federal protections for abortion access, expand maternal health programs, and guarantee the right to die with dignity.
Instead, extremists are using laws like Georgia’s to promote a dystopian vision of “pro-life” that reduces women to wombs, regardless of consent, health, or even life itself.
We must demand better. Adriana Smith’s family should not have to fight the state for the right to say goodbye. No one should.
