A BRAIN-dead mum’s baby has been delivered after her family’s torturous struggle with doctors to switch off her life support.

Adriana Smith, 31, was nine weeks pregnant when doctors discovered she had blood clots in her brain and tragically declared her brain-dead.

But despite her family begging for a say in her future, doctors insisted she couldn’t be taken off life-support due to Georgia‘s ban on abortion.

After four months of agony, Adriana’s baby – named Chance – was born prematurely on Friday with his mum’s life-support machine expected to be switched off on Tuesday.

The little boy is being kept in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Adriana’s mum, April Newkirk, told local news: “He’s expected to be OK. He’s just fighting. We just want prayers for him.”

The boy’s birth comes amid mounting fears he would be born with severe disabilities because of his mum’s health complications.

Just a couple months ago, April revealed how the foetus had hydrocephalus, otherwise known as fluid on the brain.

She said at the time: “He may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born.

“Right now, the journey is for baby Chance to survive.

“Whatever condition God allows him to come here in, we’re going to love him just the same.”

Tragic discovery

Adriana Smith, 30, was nine weeks pregnant when she went to hospital in Georgia seeking treatment for agonising headaches three months ago.

The young nurse was sent home by doctors with medication after not receiving a CT scan.

Adriana woke up the next day with a shortness of breath and making gargling sounds, with the hospital later discovering she had blood clots in her brain.

After unsuccessful surgery to relieve the pressure they were causing, Adriana was tragically declared brain-dead.

The nurse has a seven-year-old son who is now without his mum, leaving Adriana’s already-grieving family devastated.

But the already-harrowing circumstances turned into “an absolute horror show” after Emory University Hospital told Adriana’s family that despite her being legally dead, she wasn’t allowed to die.

This is because the hospital – where Adriana previously worked – say it’s acting “in compliance with Georgia’s abortion laws”.

The hospital demanded Adriana’s body was kept alive on breathing and feeding tubes until medical staff determined the male foetus was sufficiently developed to be delivered by cesarean section.

Health officials in Georgia reportedly believe that removing her from life support would violate the state’s strict anti-abortion laws.

The laws prohibit termination once a foetal heartbeat is detected at roughly six weeks.

Despite Georgia’s contentious law dubbed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act containing an exception to save the life of the mother, according to the hospital, this didn’t apply to Adriana.

They say this was because her life was beyond saving.

Adriana’s heartbroken family hadn’t made a decision on whether to switch off her life support, but were left devastated that the choice was no longer theirs.

Adriana’s mum heartbreakingly told 11Alive: “This is torture for me.

“I see my daughter breathing by the ventilator but she’s not there.”

Despite Georgia’s LIFE Act being passed in 2019, it didn’t come into effect until 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.

This is the 1973 case that determined a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Doctors anticipated that there would be even more problems as the fetus grew, with life-support systems not designed for long-term treatment of brain-dead patients.

And with blood no longer running to Adriana’s brain, the organ was already beginning to decompose.

Director of maternal fetal medicine division at George Washington University at the time said: “The chance of there being a healthy newborn at the end of this is very, very small.”

Contentious law

Legal experts have argued that the ways in which anti-abortion laws have been written have made doctors and hospitals fear potentially facing criminal charges.

They also say lawmakers should have anticipated how the movement to establish what’s been dubbed “foetal personhood” – where a foetus would have legal rights – would end up putting the rights of the mum below those of their unborn child.

Some of Georgia’s conservatives have even argued that the state’s LIFE law has been misinterpreted.

The state’s Republican attorney general Chris Carr said in a statement that the law doesn’t require doctors to keep brain-dead patients alive as turning off life support “is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy”.

But others like state Senator Ed Setzler have said that there’s a “valuable human life” and that “it’s the right thing to save it”.

It is not the first time an American woman has been kept on life support due to a pregnancy.

In 2014, Marlise Munoz became brain-dead due to a pulmonary embolism at 14 weeks pregnant.

Hospital workers had refused to honour Marlise’s previously stated wish to not be kept alive on machines.

The medical staff cited a state law that stopped hospitals from withdrawing or witholding “life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient”.

But Marlise’s husband began a legal battle to get her taken off life support, with a judge ruling in his favour.

Marlise was removed from life support before the foetus was born.