How a Headache Became a National Crisis
The Adriana Smith Timeline: From First Symptoms to Forced Life Support and a Baby Born Too Soon
Adriana Smith was 30 years old. A nurse. A mother. And newly pregnant when she began experiencing a sudden, unrelenting headache in early February 2025.
She knew something wasn’t right.
She sought help. Twice.
She was discharged. Twice.
By the time she was taken seriously, it was already too late.
What followed wasn’t just a medical tragedy—it became a legal and ethical nightmare. One that ended with a premature birth, a grieving family, and a nation grappling with the consequences of post-Roe politics.
Here’s how it unfolded.
📅 Adriana Smith Timeline: February – June 2025
Early February 2025
Adriana, approximately 8–9 weeks pregnant, experiences a severe headache and seeks emergency care at Northside Hospital in Atlanta. She is discharged without any imaging or neurological evaluation. According to her family, this was the first of two hospitals that sent her home despite her severe symptoms .
Key moment: No CT scan or MRI is performed. She’s sent home with medication.
February 18, 2025
The day after her initial ER visit, Adriana is found “gasping for air in her sleep.” Her family calls 911. She is taken by ambulance to Emory University Hospital Midtown.
A CT scan reveals extensive blood clots in her brain.
Despite medical intervention, she suffers catastrophic brain injury. Within 24 hours, she is declared brain dead.
Key moment: Adriana is legally dead. But because she is pregnant, the hospital informs the family she will be kept on life support.
February – May 2025
Adriana’s body is maintained on somatic support—machines keeping her heart and organs functioning—to preserve the pregnancy.
Doctors inform her family that under Georgia’s abortion law (the LIFE Act), they have no say in withdrawing care. The fetus is considered a separate patient with legal rights.
Key moment: Adriana remains on life support for months, not because she can recover, but because she is pregnant.
Her family is devastated. Her mother, April Newkirk, says:
“We wanted the baby. But the decision should’ve been left to us—not the state.”
Mid-May 2025
The pregnancy reaches approximately 22 weeks. The case becomes public, igniting national outcry over Georgia’s abortion restrictions, fetal personhood, and maternal consent.
Some legal experts argue that the law doesn’t actually require what’s happening. Georgia’s Attorney General issues a statement suggesting the hospital may be misinterpreting the statute. But Emory Hospital declines to withdraw support.
Key moment: Public debate escalates. The law’s ambiguity traps Adriana’s body in a legal limbo.
June 13, 2025
At around 25 weeks gestation, Adriana undergoes an emergency C-section. Her son, Chance, is born weighing just 1 lb 13 oz (≈822 grams).
Immediately after delivery, Adriana is removed from life support and allowed to pass.
Key moment: A premature baby is delivered. A dead woman is finally allowed to die.
Mid-June 2025 (Post-Delivery)
Baby Chance remains in the NICU. He is stable for his age, but doctors caution that his early delivery, small size, and in-utero complications carry high risks of long-term neurological and physical challenges.
Key moment: The family now focuses on Chance’s survival—and begins mourning Adriana.
🧭 Lets take a minute to talk about what its like to be in an ICU on Life Support
ICUs, especially neuro ICUs, are some of the most haunting places in a hospital. The patients are technically alive—lungs moving, hearts beating—but what makes them human is often long gone.
The first thing you notice is the noise.
Alarms go off constantly—shrill beeps from ventilators, heart monitors, infusion pumps. The sound never stops. Every room is a glass box, so the team can always see you. Privacy becomes a memory.
If you’re intubated, the ventilator breathes for you—often at the cost of damaging your lungs. You’re stuck with IVs in every limb until the veins collapse, and then they go for deeper access—like in your neck. A catheter drains your bladder. If you’re having bowel movements, there’s a containment device, but it’s imperfect. You’re often soiled. There’s a smell to dying that lingers. It’s hard for people to stay in the room.
Your body must be turned multiple times a day to prevent bedsores. That takes at least two people. You may not feel any of it—if your brain is damaged enough, you probably aren’t aware. But the procedures continue. The poking, the probing, the repositioning.
And though you’re no longer the person you were in life, your family still comes. They come because your body is still warm. They sit, they wait, they pray. Even when everyone knows you will never wake up.
These ICU stays can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Insurance might cover part of it, but often not all. Families end up with liens on their homes. College dreams get deferred. Generational wealth—gone. All to keep a body breathing, even when the spirit has already left.
It is a brutal, dehumanizing fate.
You become something between person and object—a vessel the hospital maintains with full knowledge you will never return.
And this was Adriana Smith’s reality.