Is Adriana Smith’s son a threat to abortion rights?
We hosted a detailed discussion of the laws and other complexities in the Adriana Smith case. You can access the replay link here:
[This article is a transcript of “Is Adriana Smith’s son a threat to abortion rights?” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]
(Video also available on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.)
You guys have probably heard the story of Adriana Smith, a woman who was declared brain dead in Georgia and then kept on life support in the hopes that her unborn son could develop enough to be born alive and survive. There was a ton of controversy about what this meant for the abortion debate, and we talked a lot about it at the time. Basically, pro-choice people said Smith was being kept alive against her family’s wishes because it would be considered an abortion to take her off life support and let her son die. We argued it actually didn’t really have to do with Georgia’s abortion law, which the Georgia AG’s office also said, and we said it was actually about Georgia’s very specific laws about when pregnant people are decisionally incapacitated and don’t have a specific advanced directive saying what they want to do in the case that they are pregnant.
Whatever you think about all that isn’t really my point in this video. In this video, I want to talk about the very specific ways that some abortion rights advocates have spoken about Adriana Smith’s son, Chance.
This is the article that came out when the story first broke and made national headlines. In it, they quote Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, as saying that the doctors told the family that the baby has fluid on the brain and they’re not sure how much fluid; they’re concerned about his health.
Keep in mind that when you do have prenatal signs of potential problems, they can often be vague and unclear and, without more specific testing, you don’t really know what’s going to happen often until after a baby is born. There was a follow-up a week or two later where they interviewed Newkirk again and she talks about how they’re really hoping the baby will make it. She said the baby’s actually doing better than the last time she met with the doctors. She said that his heartbeat is strong, he’s measuring slightly above average in weight and continuing to grow, and she explained that the family named the boy Chance.
That did not stop countless, countless of these kinds of comments when discussing the case of Adriana Smith:
Keep in mind, all of this certainty that Chance can’t survive is used to make arguments that they should remove life support and let him die.
But then he did survive until birth. A few weeks later, they had a follow-up article talking about how he was removed via C-section, and his grandmother said he’s expected to be okay, and she asked people to pray for him. And I’m sure there were a lot of people praying for him, both pro-life and pro-choice people. There are plenty of pro-choice people who might have a problem with the way this was handled if they think it’s about the abortion law or whatever else, but still don’t wish that the baby would then die.
And then there are these other people.
At the time that I screen capped this, it had almost 75,000 likes:
At the time that I screen capped this, 26,000 likes.
29,000 likes.
Well, the story is not over yet, but so far Chance has lived. An update came out last week talking about how he’s “fighting for his life.” If you read the article, by that they mean that he has continued to gain weight and they’re hoping to take him home at the end of September or maybe early October.
That sounds like good news, right? But that doesn’t stop the media from framing it like this: “Family of woman who carried baby while brain dead give heartbreaking update on the child.” They don’t get around to explaining what part of what I just said is heartbreaking. They quote Chance’s grandmother saying, “It’s not getting any better day by day,” but she’s not talking about Chance’s development. She’s talking about her grief over her daughter.
All of this aggressive nihilism and pessimism about whether or not Chance can survive and if he does survive, whether or not he’ll have a good quality of life, is not based on data. It’s not based on research about whether or not children in these circumstances typically survive or what kind of disabilities they might have. It’s definitely not based on any information about how people with disabilities rate their quality of life. It’s not even based on what his family has said they’re hoping will happen with him. No, these predictions of doom, or even in some cases people hoping that Chance won’t survive, are based on political narratives about abortion and ableist assumptions about whose lives are worth living.
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