ATLANTA >> The case of a pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead and has been kept on life support for three months has given rise to complicated questions about abortion law and whether a fetus is a person.

Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother, was about two months pregnant on Feb. 19 when she was declared brain dead, according to an online fundraising page started by her mother. Doctors said Georgia’s strict anti-abortion law requires that she remain on life support until the fetus has developed enough to be delivered, her mother wrote.

The law, one of a wave of measures enacted in conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, restricts abortion once cardiac activity is detected and gives personhood rights to a fetus.

Smith’s mother says it has left her family without a say in a difficult situation, and with her due date still months away, the family is left wondering whether the baby will be born with disabilities or can even survive.

Emory Healthcare, which runs the hospital, has not explained how doctors decided to keep Smith on life support except to say in a statement they considered “Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.”

The state adopted a law in 2019 to ban abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy, that came into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

That law does not explicitly address Smith’s situation, but allows abortion to preserve the life or physical health of the pregnant woman. Three other states have similar bans that kick in around the six-week mark and 12 bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

David S. Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in Philadelphia, said the hospital might be most concerned about part of the law that gives fetuses legal rights as “members of the species Homo sapiens.”

Cohen said Emory may therefore consider Smith and the fetus as two patients and that once Smith was on life support, they had a legal obligation to keep the fetus alive, even after she died.

“These are the kind of cases that law professors have been talking about for a long time when they talk about fetal personhood,” he said.

State Rep. Nabilah Islam Parkes, an Atlanta-area Democrat, said Friday that she sent a letter to state Attorney General Chris Carr asking for a legal opinion on how Georgia’s abortion law applies when a pregnant woman is brain dead.

Personhood divide

Anti-abortion groups are divided over whether they should support personhood provisions, which are on the books in at least 17 states, according to the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice.

Some argue that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses should be considered people with the same rights as those already born. This personhood concept seeks to give them rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says a state can’t “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process or law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Some saw personhood as politically impractical, especially after personhood amendments to state constitutions were rejected by voters in Colorado, Mississippi and North Dakota between 2008 and 2014. Those who steered away sought laws and restrictions on abortion that stopped short of personhood, although they were often informed by the concept.

Personhood proponents argue this lacks moral clarity. Some personhood proponents have been sidelined in national anti-abortion groups; the National Right to Life Committee cut ties with its Georgia Right to Life affiliate in 2014 after the state wing opposed bills that restricted abortion but allowed exceptions for rape and incest.

The Associated Press has not been able to reach Smith’s mother, April Newkirk. But Newkirk told Atlanta TV station WXIA that her daughter went to a hospital complaining of headaches and was given medication and released. Then, her boyfriend awoke to her gasping for air and called 911.