Held Hostage by a Heartbeat: A Brain-Dead Woman, a One Pound Baby, and The Law that Called it Life. Will the Ethics Please Rise?

She Was Already Gone. The Law Just Wouldn’t Let Go In February 2025, a 31-year-old Atlanta nurse named Adriana Smith collapsed from a series of catastrophic blood clots that reached her brain. She was only nine weeks pregnant. Within hours of being admitted to Emory University Hospital…