Not Forced Birth—A Mother's Final Act

How Baby Chance's Survival Was Twisted Into a Culture War Talking Point

After Adriana Smith was declared brain-dead earlier this year, she was able to give her unborn son the last gift her body was able to: a chance at life. But instead of honoring that, so-called advocates for women’s rights chose to spin her tragedy into a grotesque indictment of abortion laws—calling it “forced birth,” “slavery,” and “barbaric.”

As I covered in “Weaponizing Heartbreak…” earlier this month, Adriana’s case was not about abortion. There was no choice to terminate. She was already brain-dead. What followed was the legal outcome of Georgia’s 2007 Advance Directive for Health Care Act—passed before the Dobbs decision and before the LIFE Act even existed. That law requires doctors to continue life-sustaining treatment for pregnant women without an explicit advance directive, if the baby is not yet viable. That’s statutory default, not some theocratic punishment.

But the real story here isn’t legal. It’s cultural. It’s political. It’s medical.

The Outrage Machine Only Works One Way

Adriana was a 30-year-old mother. She was nine weeks pregnant. She reportedly complained of a severe headache before collapsing—a common thread in other cases of brain death during pregnancy, including Christine Bolden (April 2012) and Robyn Benson (January 2014). All three were kept alive long enough for their babies to be delivered. All three had previously reported symptoms that weren't taken seriously.

Where is the outrage about that?

Instead, pro-choice pundits have used Adriana’s name to fearmonger about what it means to be pregnant in a post-Roe America. They don’t grieve Adriana; they grieve over what her story could mean for them. In their framing, Adriana wasn’t a mother whose body was allowed to continue gestating her child to give him the best chance at life possible—she was a cautionary tale.

This tweet got over 106,000 likes before it was taken down.

Their reaction makes one question: was pro-choice never about honoring women’s choices, only preserving the right to end pregnancies? Because if pro-choice activists frame the survival of a severely premature baby as a failure of policy, not a miracle of perseverance, then we’ve already lost the plot.

Medical Neglect, Not Medical Martyrdom

The conversation we should be having is about why Adriana’s initial headache wasn’t treated as a red flag. Why do hospitals continue to ignore the warning signs of stroke, preeclampsia, or embolism in pregnant women? Christine Bolden said her head felt like it was going to explode. Robyn Benson collapsed after days of migraines. Adriana Smith? Same pattern.

Yet instead of demanding accountability for the care these women didn’t receive, “feminist” activists are arguing about whether it was “ethical” to keep a wanted pregnancy going until viability. If Adriana had a signed directive saying she wanted to remain on life support to give her son a chance, this would be hailed as heroism. But because she didn’t need to—because the law defaulted to preserving life—it’s now framed as cruelty?

That’s not reproductive freedom—it’s reproductive fatalism.

When Survival Becomes the Scandal

Baby Chance was born alive on June 13 and Adriana was removed from life support eleven days later. That’s biology, law, and perseverance working together...and it’s not dystopian. Whether Chance thrives or faces lifelong challenges, his birth was not a mistake. He was loved and wanted—by his mother and by her family. The outrage over his survival reveals just how far abortion politics have drifted from basic human empathy.

This wasn’t a “forced birth.” Adriana died and through a legal framework shaped during a pro-choice era, the state allowed her body to continue sustaining the child she had already begun to carry. That’s not religious extremism. That’s a mother’s body continuing the work she began in life.

The Bottom Line

If you’re outraged, be outraged at the neglect of pregnant women’s symptoms. Be outraged at the conditions that lead to brain death in young mothers. Be outraged that many women aren’t told they may need an advance directive to have their wishes honored when they are unable to communicate them.

But don’t pretend this was about abortion.

In the absence of an advance directive to the contrary, Georgia law defaulted to continuing life-sustaining treatment—an outcome that made it possible for Baby Chance to be born. Smith’s mother (baby Chance’s grandmother) stated before Chance’s birth, “I just want to be clear on something: we want her to have her baby. We want her life to continue through her children.”

It’s not a horror story…this is what it looks like when a mother’s body is allowed to finish what she started.