‘You Just Want to Scream’: Adriana Smith’s Mother on Watching Her Corpse Be Used as an Incubator
“I did see her skin changing, her body changing," April Newkirk told ABC News’ Nightline.
Screenshot: ABC News AbortionPolitics
On Wednesday, April Newkirk, the mother of Adriana Smith—the Georgia woman who was declared brain dead in February and whose pregnant body was used as an incubator to carry her baby to term—spoke to Rachel Scott on ABC News’ Nightline to discuss the details of her daughter’s harrowing story. “You know, you just want to scream,” she told the outlet. “You just want to scream, you know?”
Emory Health declared the 30-year-old Smith brain dead on February 19. She had gone to a different hospital one day earlier, complaining of severe headaches, but was sent home with painkillers and without any testing. But her boyfriend rushed her to Emory after he woke up in the middle of the night to find her gasping for air, where a CT scan revealed multiple blood clots, and she was declared brain dead. Since she was nine weeks pregnant, the hospital placed her on a ventilator—without her family’s permission—due to Georgia’s near-total abortion ban.
“When I first saw her, she looked like my daughter, but as time went on, you know, she just started changing,” Newkirk told Scott. “I did see her skin changing, her body changing.”
Smith’s baby, Chance, was delivered prematurely via C-Section in June, weighing just 1 pound, 13 ounces, and he’s been in the NICU ever since. In an August interview with 11Alive.com, Newkirk said that while he was making progress, he was struggling to breathe. To Scott, she said that Chance is still fighting for his life and is unable to breathe on his own. “His lungs are underdeveloped,” said Newkirk. “He’s not your regular premature baby.”
Georgia’s near-total abortion ban gives rights to a fetus over a pregnant person. Newkirk told ABC that if her daughter had the chance, she probably would have wanted her parents to make the decisions for her—but Emory didn’t give them the option. When the case generated national attention in May, the hospital released a statement saying that their care complied with the state’s abortion law and “used consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualized treatment recommendations.” However, in their most recent statement given to ABC, they ignore abortion altogether: “We can only say that our clinicians use vast experience, consensus from clinical experts, medical literature and where needed, guidance from multidisciplinary ethics and legal to make the best medical care decisions possible.”
“The fetus at a time had a heartbeat, so they said that they would treat the baby as the patient,” Newkirk told ABC. “And she was no longer the patient, because of the law that they have here in Georgia. There was nothing they could do but treat the baby as the patient.”
“It was hard,” she said. “Every day I think about her. Every day.”
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