Literature Review

How long was Adriana Smith on life support? Brain‑dead nurse's baby delivered by C‑section Enstarz; by David Unyime Nkanta; 6/18/25 The 31-year-old nurse was declared brain dead early in her pregnancy—her baby was born via C-section nearly four months later, sparking legal and ethical debate. Adriana Smith, a 31‑year‑old nurse in Atlanta, was declared brain dead in mid‑February after suffering serious blood clots in her brain. Despite devastating diagnosis, she remained on life support for nearly four months—a decision doctors said was legally necessary under Georgia's strict abortion laws. This rare case of maternal somatic support—keeping a brain-dead woman alive to deliver a baby—is highly unusual. On 13 June, doctors at Emory University Hospital performed an emergency c‑section, delivering a boy they named Chance, weighing just 1 lb 13 oz (around 830 g). ... Smith's mother, April Newkirk, described the ordeal as 'torture,' saying: 'I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there.' The family maintain that they were never allowed to make treatment decisions, a situation that has deeply distressed them and prompted calls for change. 

How do you live while your brother is dying? ‘Suncoast’ is a teen take on hospiceWisconsin Public Radio, by Mandalit Del Barco; 2/9/24A new film streaming on Hulu considers a subject that’s sometimes in the news, but not often in entertainment: hospice end-of-life care. Suncoast is writer-director Laura Chinn’s fictional account of her life in the early 2000s as a Florida teen with a severely ill older brother. ... Chinn helped her mother care for him for years, and at the end of his life, they moved him into a hospice center. It turned out to be the same place that a woman named Terri Schiavo was on life support for 15 years.

New documentary revisits Terri Schiavo caseAxiosDecember 13, 2023A new documentary revisits the decades-old legal fight concerning Terri Schiavo—a Tampa Bay woman who remained in a persistent vegetative state for over ten years before she died in 2005. “Between Life & Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story” explores how the pro-life movement used Schiavo to further their aims and examines how her right-to-die case laid “the groundwork for a post-Roe America.”