U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams announced a resolution Tuesday that cites the controversial case of Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old metro Atlanta nurse who was kept on artificial life support against the wishes of her family because she was pregnant.
Smith was declared brain dead in February after suffering from a medical emergency. However, due to the young mother being nine weeks pregnant, doctors at Emory Hospital decided to keep her alive, citing Georgia legislation that forbids abortion after roughly six weeks of the fetus being developed.
Known as the LIFE Act, the law was narrowly passed and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019. Three years later, in 2022, the law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
On June 13, 2025, six months into her pregnancy, Smith gave birth to a newborn son named Chance, weighing roughly 1 pound and 13 ounces.
According to WXIA-TV, April Newkirk, mother of Adriana, announced that her daughter is scheduled to be taken off of life support today.
“I’m her mother,” Newkirk said in an interview with WXIA. “I shouldn’t be burying my daughter. My daughter should be burying me.”
The case has caused criticism of Georgia’s policies on abortion and women’s health care from both residents and politicians, such as Williams.
“Adriana Smith deserved better at every point of this tragedy. Her family, along with baby Chance, remain in my family’s prayers as they navigate life after this unimaginably devastating situation that Georgia’s laws imposed on them,” said Williams in a press statement.
“From my service in the State Senate when the LIFE Act was passed in 2019, I know that the bill was drafted in a way that created uncertainty among medical providers and my constituents in Georgia’s 5th District about what is permitted under the law and how the law would be enforced. The clear intention of this was to create a chilling effect on doctors providing essential maternal healthcare services and on patients seeking lifesaving medical treatment. We are now seeing this lack of clarity result in unimaginable cruelty to Adriana Smith and her family.”
Co-led by Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sara Jacobs of California, Williams states the resolution advocates for “urgent legislative and policy changes to protect the rights, autonomy, and dignity of pregnant people — particularly Black women.”
According to a press release published Tuesday, the resolution urges the government to reaffirm and guarantee autonomy and dignity to pregnant people over their lives, well-being, and medical needs; repeal state laws that ban or criminalize abortion and abortion-related services; repeal laws that exclude pregnant people from having their advance directives come into effect and clarify how anti-abortion and fetal personhood laws should be interpreted in medical settings.
In response to criticism of the Life Act’s role in keeping Smith on life support, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr pushed back against claims that the legislation deprived the mother or her family of body autonomy.
“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” Carr’s office said in a statement to WABE in May. “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.”
However, Williams notes that without a formal legal opinion, both family and medical offices are left without guidance.
She also says that the treatment experienced by Smith could potentially discourage other women from seeking healthcare treatments out of fear of criminalization.
“Anti-abortion laws deprive people who can become pregnant of their autonomy by prioritizing the life of the fetus over the health, medical decisions, and rights of the pregnant person,” the release reads.
“The resolution declares that the House of Representatives stands with Adriana Smith’s family in their efforts to return dignity and justice to their family … and condemns the troublingly common experience that Black women face in medical settings of having their pain not given full credence or treatment.”
The Associated Press and WABE Politics Reporter Sam Gringlas contributed to this report.
