A Georgia woman has been charged with murder after going to the emergency room with severe pain she experienced after allegedly taking abortion pills at home.
Alexia Moore delivered a 22- to 24-week-old fetus “with cardiac activity” in December, according to an arrest warrant, which cited Moore’s medical records. The newborn, a girl, died within an hour.
Police questioned Moore, 31, in the hospital and charged her this month with felony murder — the first such charging, abortion advocates said, since Georgia instated a six-week abortion ban after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In the arrest warrant, police alleged that Moore’s pregnancy was “well beyond six weeks.”
Other states have charged women who have abortions with murder or attempted murder since Roe’s fall in 2022, but few of those prosecutions have advanced far. In a similar case in Georgia, prosecutors in 2015 dropped a murder charge against a woman who took abortion pills.
“This is just yet another attempt to criminalize abortion by avoiding the actual limits of the law,” said Karen Thompson, legal director of an abortion rights advocacy group Pregnancy Justice.
Moore is being held in jail in Camden County, Georgia, according to jail records. The Georgia Public Defender Council’s Brunswick Judicial Circuit office, which is representing Moore, declined to comment.
Moore was transported to the Southeast Georgia Health System Camden Campus in late December after complaining of abdominal pain, according to an arrest warrant. She told medical staff that she was pregnant and took misoprostol pills to terminate her pregnancy, the warrant alleges. She also allegedly took oxycodone, a painkiller.
A hospital security guard allegedly told officers from the Kingsland Police Department details of Moore’s pregnancy and abortion, according to a police report.
Jeffrey Roberts, a spokesperson for the Southeast Georgia Health System, said the hospital cannot comment on patient care.
In addition to murder, police also charged Moore with possession of a Schedule II controlled substance and possession of dangerous drugs.
Women in other states have faced murder charges since Roe was overturned. A Texas woman spent three days in jail in 2022 after she was charged with murder for a “self-induced abortion.” State law said women could not face criminal charges for aborting pregnancies, and the woman later sued the county. A South Carolina woman was charged in November with attempted murder for allegedly trying to end her pregnancy, and a Kentucky woman faced a fetal homicide charge after she allegedly aborted her pregnancy at home.
A Georgia district attorney in 2015 dropped a murder charge against Kenlissia Jones, who took abortion pills and delivered a child who died 30 minutes after birth, and stated that Georgia law does not permit the prosecution of a woman for terminating her pregnancy.
Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, wrote in an email to The Washington Post that carveouts in Georgia law exempt pregnant women who are seeking abortions from facing charges of feticide or assault of an unborn child. An attempt to apply the terms of Georgia’s abortion ban, which largely establishes fetal personhood, to the state’s murder laws could face a constitutional challenge, she added.
Americans largely do not support criminally charging women who have abortions. In a 2022 Economist/YouGov poll, 19 percent of adult respondents said a woman who has an abortion that violates state law should be charged with murder. Fifty-four percent said she should not be charged, and 26 percent said they were unsure.
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
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