Adriana Smith, a 30 year old nurse in Atlanta, Georgia, had terrible headaches. So severe were the headaches that Smith went to the doctor to seek medical help. She was given meds and sent home. Unbeknownst to her or her doctor, she had multiple blood clots in her brain and, tragically, would be brain dead by the end of the next day.
If that weren’t horrific enough, Adriana Smith was pregnant.
Though Smith is brain dead, she is being kept on life support until her baby can be delivered.
Those are the “few facts of the case, as far as the public knows,” the New York Times reliably tells us.1 Or, rather, a guest essayist tells us. The opinion piece is anonymous. It makes one wonder who exactly wrote it and why he or she didn’t want his or her name attached to it. As it happens, it’s rather easy to see why a person wouldn’t want their name associated with this essay.
To advocate what the opinion piece is advocating—that the baby inside Adriana Smith be aborted, that is, killed!—is to be a moral monster. What else can be concluded? The opinion piece’s position is morally reprehensible, the writer and NY Times knows it, and therefore the piece was published anonymously.
Adriana Smith’s mother knows this, too. Her response to the situation:
“We didn’t have a choice or a say about it,” Ms. Smith’s mother told a local news outlet. “We want the baby. That’s a part of my daughter. But the decision should have been left to us — not the state.”2
If she wants the baby, then why decry the decision? She should be overcome with gratitude that the hospital was able to save her grandchild. Instead, she’s complaining that she didn’t get to choose whether to save the baby or end the baby’s life. Reading between the lines, it’s obvious she would have chosen to let the baby die.
If the New York Times had the say, they would let the baby die also. So the article:
Reproductive justice advocates have long been clear that abortion law is never only about abortion. It is about the exercise of control over all pregnant women, regardless of whether they plan to carry their pregnancies to term.3
Because of Georgia’s “restrictive” laws about abortion, Smith’s “barbarous condition is insisted upon by the law.”4 But the piece never actually spells out what is so barbarous about the situation. In fact, they can’t. There is no harm to Adriana Smith. It’s only because of the harm that has, unfortunately, devastatingly, already happened to her that the New York Times has even picked up the case.
The only harm that can now happen is to the baby!
The opinion piece wants to frighten its readers by imagining the baby having to live with disabilities. And worse, Smith’s parents having to take care of the baby if he or she is born with disabilities. But a quick look at the CDC’s “Data and Statistics on Birth Defects” shows that Smith’s parents won’t be the first or only parents in the country who take care of a child with disabilities.5
But in a country which prizes the individual’s autonomy and feelings over any other consideration, keeping Smith on life support until her baby can live outside the womb is “dystopian” and “is a co-optation of a woman’s death to engage in a frightening medical experiment with a deeply uncertain outcome.”6 The New York Times ghoulishly wants us to believe that preserving this baby’s life is a “frightening medical experiment.” My guess is that they believe it’s on par with Dr. Mengele’s experiments. They never stop to consider what the baby’s father wants. Perhaps more importantly, they never even consider that Adriana Smith herself would rather give up her own life to preserve the life of her baby! Any right thinking parent would naturally protect their children at the risk of their own lives.
Given the choice, I’m willing to bet Adriana Smith would agree with that.
“A Brain-Dead Woman Is Being Kept on Machines to Gestate a Fetus. It Was Inevitable,” The New York Times, 24 May 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/opinion/georgia-abortion-brain-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare.
“Woman,” The New York Times, emphasis mine.
“Woman,” The New York Times.
“Woman,” The New York Times.
“Data and Statistics on Birth Defects,” CDC, 19 November 2024, https://www.cdc.gov/birth-defects/data-research/facts-stats/index.html.
“Woman,” The New York Times.