Whose Choice? Whose Life?

The case of Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Georgia nurse who has been brain-dead since early February, became the center of a skirmish between the country’s pro-choice and pro-life factions last month after an Atlanta news station’s interview with Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, was picked up by national media. Smith, Newkirk told a local news station, is being kept alive via life support without her family’s prior consent so that her unborn child can continue to gestate until delivery. (Newkirk did not respond to The Atlantic’s requests for comment.)