Giving Chance a Chance: Pro-Life Group Fundraises to Help Brain-Dead Woman's Family and Unborn Baby
As leftists decry the boy's continued existence, Students for Life of America is raising funds to keep him alive.
A fundraiser launched through Students for Life of America's Standing With You Initiative aims to raise $100,000 to protect the life of an unborn baby boy whose mother was declared brain-dead.
So far, the group has raised more than $6,800 to help pay the medical bills of Adriana Smith, a Georgia nurse on life support for the last three months.
"We understand how expensive medical bills can be and we are ready to Stand with Adriana and her baby boy. So, we're taking action to help Adriana, her baby, and the family," Students for Life told Restoration News in a statement.
The 30-year-old mother was about nine weeks pregnant when she was declared brain-dead on Feb. 19. According to her family, Smith had complained of intense headaches. She received medication from Atlanta's Northside Hospital and was promptly released. The next morning, her boyfriend found her gasping for air and dialed 911.
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Doctors at Emory University Hospital delivered the diagnosis after discovering blood clots in Smith's brain. They have kept her alive since then to allow her baby boy to grow and develop enough that he may be safely delivered via cesarean section at 32 weeks' gestation.
Smith is now 22 weeks pregnant.
Adriana Smith, a Georgia mom and nurse, is on life support after a medical emergency at just 9 weeks pregnant.
— Students for Life of America | Pro-Life Gen (@StudentsforLife) May 19, 2025
Now at 21 weeks, her baby boy is still alive—his heart beating strong.
Doctors hope to deliver him safely at 32 weeks. But activists and media voices are pressuring…
A Second Chance
The story has made headlines as Smith's family members, who bear the burden of paying her medical bills, voiced their frustration over not having a choice in sustaining her life. They said the hospital cited Georgia's law restricting most abortions after a fetal heartbeat begins—or roughly six weeks' gestation—as the reason they must keep Smith alive.
Abortion activists quickly seized upon the story as another opportunity to disparage Georgia's abortion law as something out of "The Handmaid's Tale."
According to the Georgia attorney general's office, however, the law itself does not require a brain-dead woman to stay on life support to save her baby.
"There is nothing in the LIFE act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death," Attorney General Chris Carr's office said in a statement last week, according to Catholic News Agency.
"Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy,'" the statement continued, quoting the law.
Another Georgia law could affect the hospital's decision, however.
The Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care Act forbids doctors from removing a patient in "a terminal condition or state of permanent unconsciousness" from life support if that patient is pregnant with a viable baby and has no advance directive in place requesting withdrawal from life support.
Students for Life holds that Smith's doctors made the right call.
"While Adriana can no longer speak for herself, her son's life still matters. Her doctors are doing the right thing by treating him as a unique patient," the organization said.
Smith's mother, April Newkirk, seems to have reached that same conclusion.
Although she reiterated the family's concerns over not be given a say in the matter, Newkirk recently clarified to 11Alive that the family does want Smith's baby to live. She said he continues to grow and has developed well.
"He has his toes, arms, limbs—everything is forming," she said. "We're just hoping he makes it."
She also revealed that the family has named the boy Chance.
"Because to me, he's getting a second chance."
(READ MORE: If Abortion Is Healthcare, Why Is Abortion Data Going Unreported?)
