In recent weeks, the story of Adriana Smith — a Georgia woman, declared brain dead, being kept alive by the state due to her pregnancy, without the consent or input of her family — has captured national attention.
Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told a local Atlanta TV station after her daughter had been on life support for 90 days (with aggressive medical bills piling up) that the experience was “torture.” And it is all due to the laws in the state that required physicians to prioritize a potentially viable fetus over the will of Smith and her family.
Advance directives exist for a reason, as a means for a person to preemptively state in a legal document what they want to happen if they are near death or incapacitated in a lasting way. However, depending on the state you live in, your final wishes — like those of Smith and her family — can actually be ignored or bypassed just because you are pregnant.
Yes, this does functionally put an asterisk over the whole concept of an advanced directive for more than half of the population in the majority of U.S. states, particularly if you live in any of the nine states that automatically toss out a pregnant person’s advance directive:
Alabama
