The baby of a brain-dead woman, forcibly kept alive by doctors concerned they might breach the state of Georgia's 'heartbeat' abortion laws has been delivered in the US.
Weighing 538 grams, baby Chance was born via caesarean section on June 13, and swiftly taken to the neonatal intensive care unit where he remains.
His mother, Adriana Smith, was then taken off life support.
What started out as a story of a young mother experiencing headaches rapidly became international news and the latest example of the consequences of laws applied by US states in the wake of Roe V Wade protections being overturned.
So how did this happen?
The 30-year-old mother and nurse, was about nine weeks into the pregnancy with her second child, when she begun to experience headaches.
Her mother, April Newkirk, told local news outlets that she was denied a CT scan and returned home.
She woke the next day gasping for air and making gurgling sounds.
Her boyfriend called 911 and she was taken to hospital where she was diagnosed with brain clots.
She rapidly deteriorated and within hours, was declared brain dead.
Smith’s family were told by the hospital that she would need to be kept on life support to preserve her pregnancy until they could deliver the foetus due to Georgia law that applies "personhood" to any foetus whose heartbeat can be medically detected.
Three months later, Ms Newkirk told local media seeing her daughter kept breathing with machines was like "torture".
She said that the family visited her daughter regularly with her five-year-old son.
Ms Newkirk told local news station 11Alive that the family wanted the baby but the choice should have been up to them, "not the state".
This week also marked what would have been Adriana Smith's 31 birthday.
Family and community members gathered at a church in Atlanta for a rally and celebration of her life where they cut a birthday cake for her and released white balloons.
Baby Chance is 'fighting'
Prior to Chance’s birth, there were major concerns for his health.
Ms Newkirk told local news network WXIA that doctors told the family the foetus had fluid on his brain.
She also shared concerns he would be born with vision loss or wouldn’t be able to walk.
The hospital, Emory Healthcare told the Associated Press it could not comment on an individual case because of privacy rules, but released a statement saying it, "uses consensus from clinical experts, medical literature, and legal guidance to support our providers as they make individualised treatment recommendations in compliance with Georgia's abortion laws and all other applicable laws. Our top priorities continue to be the safety and wellbeing of the patients we serve."
'Heartbeat laws'
Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed a near-total abortion ban in the state, in 2019.
The law, which also defines a "person" to include an "unborn child" was blocked before it took effect because it violated the right to abortion established by the US Supreme Court in its 1973 landmark Roe v Wade ruling.
But when that law was overturned in 2022, it cleared the way for the state law to immediately take effect.
The Georgia law bans most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” is present.
Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women realise they are pregnant.
The Georgia law includes exceptions for rape and incest, as long as a police report is filed.
It also provides for later abortions when the mother's life is at risk or a serious medical condition renders a foetus unviable.
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Georgia's abortion law told the Associated Press in May the situation was problematic.
"Her family deserved the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions," Ms Simpson said in a statement.
"Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatisation, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing."
In May, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr released a statement saying that Georgia's six-week law does not require medical professionals to keep women alive on life support after being declared brain-dead.
"Removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy," Mr Carr's spokesperson, Kara Murray, said in the statement.
Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, said while a few states have laws that specifically limit removing treatment from a pregnant woman who is alive but incapacitated, or brain dead, Georgia isn't one of them.
"Removing the woman's mechanical ventilation or other support would not constitute an abortion."
"Continued treatment is not legally required."
But Georgia state Senator Ed Setzler, a Republican who sponsored the 2019 law, said he supported Emory's interpretation.
"I think it is completely appropriate that the hospital do what they can to save the life of the child," Mr Setzler said.
"I think this is an unusual circumstance, but I think it highlights the value of innocent human life. I think the hospital is acting appropriately."
Has anything like this happened before?
A similar case took place in Texas 10 years ago when a brain-dead woman was kept on life support for about two months because she was pregnant.
A judge eventually ruled that the hospital was misapplying state law, and life support was removed.
Georgia's abortion ban has been in the spotlight before.
Last year, ProPublica reported that two Georgia women died after they did not get proper medical treatment for complications from taking abortion pills.
The stories of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller entered into the presidential race, with Democrat Kamala Harris saying the deaths were the result of the abortion bans that went into effect in Georgia and elsewhere after Roe v Wade was overturned.
