Critics of Georgia’s abortion ban push for clarity after another case makes international news

This story was updated at 4:10 p.m. on June 2, 2025. 

Georgia Democrats are calling for clarity in the state’s abortion law as the case of Adriana Smith continues to grab headlines worldwide.

Undiagnosed blood clots in Smith’s brain left the 30-year-old nurse brain dead months ago, but doctors have kept her organs functioning through medical devices. Family members told media outlets Smith’s body was being kept alive despite no chance for her to recover because she is pregnant and removing her from life support could violate the state’s ban on most abortions after six weeks.

Georgia’s top lawyer disagrees with that interpretation of the law.

“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,” Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement. “Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’”

But a public statement does not come with the force of law, said Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, a Duluth Democrat, and when it comes to the practice of medicine, legal gray areas can lead to tragic outcomes.

Speaking at a press conference Thursday at the state Capitol, Islam Parkes called on Carr to issue a legally binding opinion to answer a series of questions she said would spell out when doctors could treat a pregnant woman in a way that could harm or kill the fetus: Is a hospital legally required to maintain a brain dead pregnant woman on life support? What precisely constitutes a medical emergency under the law? Under what conditions does a pregnancy meet the threshold of incompatibility with life? How does the law affect legal standing of advanced directives and end-of-life planning for pregnant Georgians?

“These questions are not theoretical,” Islam Parkes said. “They’re urgent, because as long as this law remains vague, we will continue to see families traumatized, providers criminalized and patients left behind. Doctors are being forced to make impossible choices, families are trapped in grief and fear and women are dying.”

Islam Parkes was referencing two high-profile deaths, Georgians Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, who both died in 2022 after suffering complications from taking abortion pills. Thurman died in a hospital after doctors waited nearly a day to perform a routine procedure to remove fetal tissue from her uterus; Miller died after family members said she was afraid to seek medical care because of the recently enacted law.

Democrats said there are likely more cases that do not end in death.

Kaycee Maruscak of Gwinnett said she had already picked out a name for her unborn daughter, Sawyer Nicole Christian, but in March, a day after Maruscak held a gender reveal party, she discovered her daughter’s heart had stopped beating.

“In a matter of seconds, we went from preparing to welcome her into our lives to trying to figure out how to say goodbye,” she said at the Capitol press conference. “My doctor was sympathetic, but because of the restrictive abortion laws, my care was limited to a list of abortion clinics. No follow-up plan, no guidance and no support. Over the next two days, I called clinic after clinic, continuously having to repeat and relive that Sawyer did not have a heartbeat. My insurance recommended me to go to the emergency department because of increasing septic symptoms, so I did. I spent seven hours there in pain, in grief, and in shock, only to be discharged with no treatment, no resolution and no care.”

Maruscak said she spent more than a week carrying her daughter’s remains.

“What happened to me is not rare. It is not an outlier. It’s happening every day,” she said. “One in four women experience a miscarriage. Over half of them need medical intervention to complete it safely. This is not just a political issue, it’s a medical one.”

Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones made no bones about the party’s ultimate goal of repealing the six-week abortion ban, which went into effect in 2022 after the United States Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion and left the matter to states.

“As that fight continues, we must stand with and demand clarification from our governor and attorney general,” Jones said. “What rights do women have under this law? Georgians have been asking this question. We as legislators have been asking this question and the people standing here today have been asking this question, yet Georgia’s leadership has stayed silent.”

The author of Georgia’s abortion bill, Acworth Republican Sen. Ed Setzler, accused Democrats of playing politics in an attempt to drum up headlines.

“My heart goes out to Adriana, her family, and the young son inside of her who is struggling for his life,” Setzler said. “Nabilah Islam Parkes and the Democrats are sickening at the depths they will go to drag Adriana’s hurting family, who is trying to save the life of their grandson, through a sick political debate about expanding abortion.”

“The Democrats are making attacks as loudly as they can to try to seize media attention,” he added.

Conservative radio host and Georgia Life Alliance board member Martha Zoller said tragic cases like Maruscak’s are not the result of the state’s abortion ban – sometimes referred to by supporters as the “heartbeat bill” – but of hospitals misunderstanding or misapplying it.

“Once you’ve had a miscarriage or you’re in the process of a miscarriage, there is no heartbeat, so there should be no reason for care to be withheld or anything like that,” she said. “That’s the over-legalization of the medical care business with not allowing providers to be providers and to do what’s best for patients. And that has nothing to do with the heartbeat bill. That has to do with the structure at the hospital. The care for a miscarriage is not denoted as something that’s a method of abortion in the heartbeat bill, and once you’ve had a miscarriage, there is no heartbeat, so the heartbeat bill doesn’t come into play.”

“It’s a travesty that the Democratic caucus continues to mislead women and scare them for their own political purposes,” she added.

Update: An earlier version of this story omitted the first reference to Kaycee Maruscak.