Apple News Today
A brain-dead pregnant woman is being kept alive, raising ethical questions
21 May 2025
A pregnant woman in Georgia is being kept alive as a hospital navigates the state’s abortion laws. The family is speaking out. The Guardian has the story. Kentucky is still grappling with the aftermath of intense tornadoes, as well as dealing with more storm systems. USA Today reports on how cuts to the National Weather Service have led to scrambles to cover important shifts. And PBS Newshour also highlights the impact of cuts on the service. New Oklahoma school standards include a requirement to teach students misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. Beth Wallis, education reporter with StateImpact Oklahoma, joins to discuss how and why this happened. Plus, France, the U.K., and Canada united to condemn Israel, lawyers accused Trump administration of defying courts to send migrants to South Sudan, and the NBA conference finals are set to begin. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu. Correction: A previous version of this episode cited comments the U.N. humanitarian chief made to the BBC that 14,000 babies in Gaza would die in the next 48 hours if they do not receive aid. The BBC has since updated that reporting to reflect that a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification estimates that 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition could occur among children in Gaza ages 6 to 59 months between April 2025 and March 2026.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Wednesday, May 21st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, big cuts at federal emergency planning agencies as severe storm season arrives, why students in Oklahoma will soon be instructed to look for 2020 election discrepancies, and the NBA's age of chaos.
But first, to an issue that abortion rights activists have spent years warning about, laws that restrict abortion or give legal rights to fetuses can lead to scenarios where the rights of the person who is pregnant get pitted against the fetus they're carrying.
We're seeing this play out in Georgia right now, where over the last few months, a hospital has been keeping a brain-dead pregnant woman alive so she can carry her pregnancy to term. Under Georgia law, abortion is banned in most cases after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old mother and nurse, went to a hospital in February when she was eight weeks pregnant with an intense headache. Her mother told the local NBC affiliate 11 Alive what happened next.
They gave us a medication, but they didn't do any tests. They didn't do any CT scans. If they did, they would have caught it.
What doctors had seemingly missed were blood clots in her brain. She was discharged. But just one day later, she woke up gasping for air, and she was rushed to a different hospital. Her blood clots were diagnosed, and within hours, she was declared brain dead.
But Smith's family says that doctors at Emory University Hospital have told them they cannot stop or remove the devices that are allowing Smith to continue breathing because of Georgia's abortion law. The law includes an exception if an abortion is necessary to save the life of the woman. But in this case, the family says the doctors are claiming Smith's life is not at risk.
So the rights the state affords to fetuses takes precedent. Georgia's attorney general released a statement saying that Georgia's law does not require medical professionals to keep a pregnant person alive on life support if they are brain dead. As of now, the hospital plans to keep her on life support until August when doctors intend to deliver her baby via C-section.
Emory Healthcare said it couldn't comment on the individual case for privacy reasons and that it seeks input from clinical and legal experts to make decisions. Smith's mother told the local NBC affiliate she believes it ultimately should have been up to the family to make this decision.
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