In the American state of Georgia, a hospital has been keeping a pregnant woman on life support for three months after she was declared brain dead due to a local law banning abortions. This is reported by Associated Press, writes UNN.
Details
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, informed the family of a woman who suffered brain death after resuscitation that her body would be kept on life support until delivery due to the abortion ban.
Since there are more than three months left until the expected delivery date, this may be one of the longest artificially supported pregnancies in US medical history.
The woman's family is upset that a Georgia law restricting abortions after the detection of fetal heart activity does not allow relatives to determine whether to leave the body of a deceased pregnant woman on life support or not.
Georgia's so-called "heartbeat law" is one of the restrictive abortion laws that have been passed in many conservative states since the US Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade three years ago.
Addition
30-year-old nurse Adriana Smith complained of severe headaches in February. She went to Northside Hospital in Atlanta, where she was given medication and discharged.
The next morning, her husband woke up to her choking and called an ambulance. At Emory University Hospital, the woman was found to have blood clots in her head and was declared brain dead.
That is, she is legally and physically dead. However, her relatives cannot bury and mourn the deceased with dignity due to the legal requirements to preserve the life of an embryo that has already had a heartbeat detected. Instead, removing breathing tubes and other life-saving devices will likely kill the fetus.
Northside Hospital is not commenting on the situation. Emory Healthcare, where the detained body is located, said it cannot comment on the individual case due to privacy rules. However, the medical facility issued a statement saying that it "uses a consensus of clinical experts, medical literature and legal advice on issues related to patient care."
The situation in Atlanta, the publication writes, is reminiscent of a case in Texas that occurred more than ten years ago. Then a woman with brain death was kept on a ventilator for about two months because she was pregnant. Eventually, a judge ruled that the hospital had misapplied state law and the ventilator was turned off. The fetus did not survive.
Let us remind you
Abortions in the United States have different legal status, restrictions, and funding depending on the state. They were legalized (the possibility for states to completely ban abortions was excluded) at the federal level from 1973 to 2022 by the decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of "Roe v. Wade".
In June 2022, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization[en], the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution does not provide for the right to abortion, and thereby overturned the legalization of abortions at the federal level and transferred the rights to regulate abortions to the states. Since then, in a number of so-called conservative states, medical termination of pregnancy is prohibited even if it occurred as a result of rape and incest. The physical death of the mother is not a mitigating circumstance if the fetal heartbeat is recorded.