Adriana Smith, a mother and nurse in the U.S. state of Georgia, was 9 weeks pregnant with her second child when she started experiencing unusually intense, painful headaches. She went to the hospital, but they simply gave her medication. The very next morning, her boyfriend noticed her "gasping for air in her sleep." He rushed her to another hospital, where doctors discovered blood clots in her brain.
Doctors declared her brain-dead and medically dead. It was already a horrible, heart-wrenching tragedy. But then medical staff said
they had to put the dead woman on life support to keep her body alive, and carry her fetus to term. Why? Because under
Georgia's abortion-banning "heartbeat bill," they were terrified of being charged with terminating the woman's pregnancy, ie abortion.
Sign the petition to demand that Georgia lawmakers overturn their disgusting "heartbeat bill" abortion ban! Until they do, this hospital - and others - will continue abusing women's bodies for fear of breaking the law.By now, she's been on life support for 3 months, and her body has reached 21 weeks of pregnancy.
But she is dead, unable to consent, and not aware of anything that is happening to her body. The woman's mother described it as
"torture" to watch her daughter undergo this nightmare.
Medical experts agree that there is
very little chance her body would be able to successfully deliver a healthy baby, especially since she went on life support so early on in her pregnancy. The rare cases where brain-dead women's bodies have successfully given birth all occurred when they had spent significantly less time being kept artificially alive by tubes.
Already, the fetus has fluid in its brain. As a result,
doctors have warned the family that it "may be blind, may not be able to walk, [and] may not survive" after birth.Despite all this, the hospital is refusing to take this woman's body off life-support. When her body reaches 32 weeks of pregnancy, they plan to cut her open via a C-section to deliver the baby.
And in the meantime,
the hospital bills keep stacking up. Hospital stays - especially a hospital stay that may ultimately last for 6 months by the end - are expensive. The family has had to turn to GoFundMe to try and raise money to help cover these costs.
Georgia lawmakers must take a cold, hard look at the pain they're causing to residents of their state. They must stop holding this dead woman's body hostage, and reverse their grotesque "heartbeat bill"!