Child Likelihood is Nonetheless Preventing for His Life Whereas His Grandma Needs He Was Lifeless

Adriana Smith was nine weeks pregnant when blood clots struck, and she was declared brain dead at Emory University Hospital. Doctors placed her on life support. Inside her, a tiny child still lived. Her mother, April Newkirk, did not see Adrian and her unborn grandchild, she saw only a daughter on the machines. She went to the media. She went to court. She argued that the hospital tortured her by keeping Adriana on life support against the family’s wishes. She begged them to stop.

I understand the anguish in her voice, but I’ve never been able to understand her motives because inside Adriana’s body, a separate patient lived. A living, growing child. A grandson.

As a father, I cannot begin to measure the grief that April Newkirk carries. To lose a daughter suddenly and violently is a wound no parent can prepare for.

When Adriana was declared brain dead in February 2025, nine weeks pregnant, her mother entered a nightmare. Machines breathed for her child. The body stayed warm. Her daughter was gone. That kind of pain steals the air from a room. I do not pretend to grasp it. It is real, and it is terrible.

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But as a grandfather, I cannot escape another truth that will not leave my thoughts.

How does a grandmother not fight for her grandchild?

On June 13, 2025, that child, Baby Chance, entered the world by emergency C-section at about 24 weeks of gestation. He weighed 1 pound, 13 ounces. Four days later, after his birth, Adriana was removed from life support.

She died, but Chance survived.

That fact has moral weight. It cannot be brushed aside. It is the difference between a tragedy with one grave and a tragedy with two.

Chance did not arrive full term. He arrived as a premature infant. Children born at 24 weeks often live in the NICU for months. Their lungs are fragile. Breathing on their own is hard work. Feeding is complex. Infection always lurks. Long hospital stays feel endless, but they are normal for babies this small.

Reports say Chance is still hospitalized. He now weighs around 11 pounds. He still needs specialized care. His long NICU stay does not prove failure. It shows how steep the hill of prematurity can be.

While his maternal grandmother fought to end his mother’s life support, his father fought for the right to raise his son.

Adrian Harden mourned his partner and tried to protect his child at the same time. Few people know that in Georgia, an unmarried father does not gain full parental rights just because a DNA test proves paternity. Without formal legitimation, he can face state involvement and legal walls just to bring his own child home.

So, while his newborn lay under hospital lights in an incubator, Harden filed an emergency petition in DeKalb County Superior Court. The court granted him temporary custody in early September. On December 2, 2025, Judge Latisha Dear Jackson awarded him sole legal and physical custody. A judge looked at the facts and said, in effect, that this father has the right to protect and raise his son.

One grandmother, tragically, fought to remove life support. One father bravely fought to bring his son home. That contrast matters.

Now the grandmother has taken her grief to the highways. April Newkirk has put up billboards with her daughter’s face beside the words “seeking justice.” Drivers pass a young woman who died from blood clots and a message that implies someone stole her life and violated her wishes.

The billboards call for accountability. They point a finger at doctors, at the hospital, at the law that protected Baby Chance while he grew inside his dying mother.

Here is the tragic truth behind those billboards. The “justice” she seeks would have meant the death of her grandson.

Every time that grandmother looks at that towering photograph, she fights for an outcome that would have erased the little boy who now battles for breath in the NICU. Those signs do not just protest medical decisions. They protest the continued existence of her own grandchild. A grandmother calls for justice, yet the remedy she demands would have destroyed the child who carries her daughter’s blood.

That breaks my heart in a new way.

I believe Adriana’s mother loved her daughter deeply. I believe she still does. Grief warps judgment. Trauma bends reason. Watching a ventilator rise and fall over a still face can feel like torture. Her pain is not in question.

But love for a grandchild should stand as a guardrail when grief threatens to run off the road.

I know what it feels like to hold a grandchild, to feel that small body pressed against your chest, to watch a tiny ribcage rise and fall. Some instinct wakes up inside you and says, “While I breathe, I will fight for you.” That instinct does not vanish because the baby came early or was sick. It does not vanish because lawyers file motions or because hospital bills pile up.

Chance’s road will be tough. Children born at 24 weeks face real risks. Chronic lung disease. Developmental delays. Neurological challenges. Adrian Harden will face long nights, countless appointments, and waves of fear.

But he has chosen to stand. He fought for custody. He listens to doctors. He waits for the day they finally say, “You can take him home.”

That is what fatherhood looks like.

Grandparenthood should look like something similar. It should rejoice that a child survived and rally around the parent who now carries the weight. It should not erect billboards that implicitly argue that this child should never have been given the chance to live.

Strip away the noise, and we see three realities.

A young mother died from blood clots.

A tiny baby survived because machines kept his mother’s body alive long enough for him to grow.

A father chose to protect his son, while the grandmother now pours her sorrow into a campaign that would have erased that boy from the world.

I ache for the grandmother who visits a grave.

I give thanks for the father who visits the NICU.

Grief and love can coexist. A grandparent can weep for a daughter and still rejoice for a grandson. Sorrow and hope can sit in the same hospital room. Real justice for Adriana’s death should mean better prevention, better care, and honest answers about what happened to her. It should not mean calling the survival of her son an injustice.

Baby Chance is still here.

In the middle of this heartbreak, that remains the most important fact of all.

LifeNews.com Note: Raimundo Rojas is the Outreach Director for the National Right to Life Committee. He is a former president of Florida Right to Life and has presented the pro-life message to millions in Spanish-language media outlets. He represents NRLC at the United Nations as an NGO. Rojas was born in Santiago de las Vegas, Havana, Cuba and he and his family escaped to the United States in 1968.