The Real Reason Some Newborns Don’t Get Screening for Deadly Diseases

Shannon Smith describes her daughter’s birth as not all that eventful. She and her husband drove 10 minutes from their home in rural Alabama across the state line to a hospital in Georgia where they had scheduled a C-section for what was anticipated to be a big baby. And she was. Weighing in over 10 lb, Avery was born in April 2019 with what Smith affectionately recalls were “little rolls that everybody loved.”

Five days later, Smith got a call from the pediatrician. “They simply said her test was abnormal for SMA, and we needed to head to the office immediately to discuss the results,” she recalls. “They did not elaborate on what SMA stood for or give any other information, so we, of course, immediately looked it up and were devastated.”

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