Democratic strategist Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Well, in the age of liberal influencers, the new ethos is never to let a tragedy go to waste, no matter how heartbreaking, if it can somehow be twisted and used to smear Republicans.
That’s what’s happening right now across social media as viral video after viral video distorts the tragic story of a pregnant woman named Adriana Smith for cynical partisan purposes. Her heartbreaking situation made national news after Smith suffered from a medical episode and was declared brain-dead while nine weeks pregnant. Rather than take her off life support, doctors have kept her on it so the baby may continue to gestate and hopefully be born alive. Social media influencers have claimed that Adriana’s “corpse” is being forced by Georgia’s abortion laws to be a “baby incubator” and that she is being “held hostage against her family’s wishes.”
“Georgia’s so-called heartbeat law has turned her body into state property,” TikTok star Spencewuah claimed in a video with nearly 10 million views. “Doctors are legally required to keep her body breathing against her family’s wishes until the fetus … reaches viability. This isn’t a miracle, this is a medically enforced hostage situation … all because a handful of extremist men want to play god.”
“Let’s stop pretending this is about life,” he concluded. “It’s about power. It’s about punishment. It’s about stripping women, especially black women, of dignity, autonomy, and peace. No, this isn’t an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale … it’s America in 2025.”
People in the comments section fell for this narrative hook, line, and sinker.
“Handmaid’s tale is no longer a horror movie, it is just basically a documentary,” one person wrote.
“Oh so let’s pack it up and move countries,” another concluded.
“This needs to be abuse of a corpse,” reads another comment that was “liked” more than 100,000 times. “This is so so heartbreaking.”
There’s just one problem: Almost every factual claim made in this viral video and others like it is untrue.
In reality, Smith’s family has never publicly stated that they want to take her off life support, despite reporting to the contrary. All they have said publicly is that doctors told them they didn’t have the option, which they object to, but they made clear they might’ve chosen to keep her and the baby alive. So, saying that she is being “held hostage against her family’s wishes” is factually untrue.
And what about Smith’s wishes? Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time and ask her, but it’s hard to imagine that a mother wouldn’t want her baby to have a chance at life, even if it meant artificially extending her own life after brain death, in a way that doesn’t entail suffering or pain.
But most crucially, the narrative that this is happening because of Georgia’s anti-abortion laws is simply not true. Removing life support for Smith would not be considered an “abortion” under the Living Infants Fairness and Equity Act because it is not an action taken for the purpose of ending a pregnancy, such as administering a medical abortion or performing a surgical abortion.
This isn’t just speculation. The state attorney general came out and clarified in a public statement, “There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death. Removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.”
It’s impossible to get a more authoritative legal opinion on state law than that. It’s indisputable: Other state laws may be affecting what the hospital can or cannot do, but not Georgia’s controversial “heartbeat bill,” which critics are blaming.
So, claims that Smith’s story proves Republican abortion laws are turning America into The Handmaid’s Tale are baseless, alarmist, and exploitative of an unquestionably tragic situation. Of course, these pesky facts haven’t stopped these false narratives from poisoning the minds of millions of people — or stopped liberal influencers with millions of followers from enriching themselves at truth’s expense.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
