(LifeSiteNews) — A 30-year-old Georgia nurse has been declared “brain dead,” but because she is pregnant, doctors are keeping her alive until she is able to deliver her baby. But how can someone who is “dead” be kept alive?
Adriana Smith was nine weeks pregnant in February when she started getting terrible headaches. She went to the hospital where, according to her family, she was not given any tests or scans but was simply treated with medications. Unfortunately, Smith worsened, and the next morning her boyfriend awoke to her gasping for breath. He promptly called 911.
According to a local news station, Smith was taken to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta where she worked as a nurse. There, a computed tomography (CT) scan revealed multiple blood clots in her brain. Initially, doctors recommended aggressive treatment; later they told the family that there was nothing they could do – Smith was “brain dead.” Because of Georgia’s heartbeat law, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, her doctors are in the logically incoherent position of saying that Smith is “dead” while they are legally obligated to keep her alive to protect her unborn child.
In addition to states with heartbeat laws, a dozen other states (Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin) prohibit the withdrawal of care from anyone diagnosed dead by neurological criteria (aka “brain death”) during pregnancy. It is well-established that so-called “brain dead” mothers can deliver healthy, viable babies. A recent review of “brain death” in pregnancy revealed that of 35 such cases, 27 babies were born alive. Of these, 89% were delivered by Cesarian section; the remainder were vaginal births. Even though the average gestational age of these babies was only 27 weeks, 85% were normal and healthy at their 20 month checkups.
But Smith’s mother and multiple media outlets are unhappy that Adriana and her child are being kept alive until the boy can survive outside his mother’s womb. Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told reporters that being unable to choose whether or not to withdraw care from her daughter and her unborn grandson has added to her trauma. “This decision should’ve been left to us. Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have – and we’re going to be the ones raising him.”
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But Adriana Smith’s family are not the only ones who have been left powerless in the face of a “brain death” diagnosis. The families of many people declared “brain dead” (such as Terrance Howard and Amber Ebanks) have pleaded with doctors not to give up on their loved ones, only to have their requests summarily denied. In practice, “brain death” is a self-fulfilling prophecy: these people very quickly either have their care withdrawn or they become organ donors.
People declared “brain dead” are neurologically disabled, but they are certainly not dead, as Smith’s case proves. “Brain death” was fabricated by thirteen men at Harvard Medical School in 1968 because they thought that certain comatose people were “as good as dead.” They thought that these people’s lives were a burden to themselves and others, and that declaring them to be dead already would free up intensive care unit beds and facilitate organ procurement. But from 1968 to the present there have never been any tests, studies, or evidence that people like Adriana Smith are actually dead or that their souls have departed. And since the 1981 Uniform Determination of Death Act, (UDDA) these people continue to be declared legally dead even though they are still biologically alive.
Moreover, as the latest (2023) American Academy of Neurology (AAN) brain death guideline explicitly states, you can be declared “brain dead” even when you still have brain waves on your EEG or if you still have ongoing function in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. This means that the way doctors diagnose “brain death” today does not comply with the law under the UDDA, which says there must be an irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain for a legal diagnosis of death.
Moreover, the new AAN guideline admits that “Because of the lack of high-quality evidence on the subject,” the new “brain death” guideline was decided upon, not by medical facts, but by three rounds of anonymous voting. Actually, the facts reveal that these “dead” people are still alive. They are warm, have beating hearts, possess cellular respiration and metabolism, digest food, excrete waste, and deliver healthy babies. The merest child can tell that these people are not dead!
Christ Medicus Foundation’s Michael Vacca, M. Th., JD, BA, wrote in a recent Linacre Quarterly article, “Indeed, so called ‘brain death’ is probably the best example in our culture of medical paternalism, or the idea that doctors know best, and we should follow them no matter what, even when they make claims that are patently absurd.”
The fact that someone declared “dead” can be kept alive proves that “brain death” is not actual death, but a legal fiction. Adriana Smith is clearly not dead but in a sleep-like coma; no amount of medical care can help a corpse to gestate and deliver a baby. The only person who is not confused about all this seems to be Smith’s older son: when he visits his mom in the hospital, he says she is just sleeping!
Heidi Klessig MD is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ harvesting and transplantation. She is the author of “The Brain Death Fallacy” and her work may be found at respectforhumanlife.com.
