Georgia police have arrested and accused a 31-year-old woman of murder after she sought emergency medical care when she took pills to induce an abortion.
Alexia Moore, of Kingsland, is held in Camden County jail on suspicion of murder and drug possession after police say she terminated her second-trimester pregnancy in late December. Georgia police said Moore violated the state’s abortion law that bans abortions after six weeks, when a heartbeat is detected.
Local prosecutors have yet to indict Moore after Kingsland police took her into custody on March 4 in southeastern Georgia, about 100 miles from Savannah, according to court records. If the case moves forward, Moore could be one of the first women prosecuted after terminating a pregnancy under the state’s law, enacted in 2019, before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Local police cited the state’s 2019 abortion law, saying the fetus was “well beyond six weeks of conception based on the medical staff’s knowledge that the baby had a beating heart and was struggling to breathe.”
Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta.
Lawyers for Moore, who has demanded a speedy trial, didn’t immediately respond to email requests for comment. The District Attorney’s office, in Brunswick Judicial Circuit, didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Kingsland Police Department declined to comment.
On Dec. 30, Moore was rushed to Southeast Georgia Health System Camden campus’ emergency room after she had abdominal pain, according to a March 5 arrest warrant. Police said Moore took several pills of the abortion medication misoprostol to end her pregnancy, which officials estimated at between 22 and 24 weeks. She also took an unprescribed pill of Oxycodone, an opioid she obtained from a relative for pain relief, police said.
She told medical staff she originally ordered the misoprostol online in November, in order to induce an abortion. She didn’t take the pills until the night of Dec. 29. Moore told police she didn’t know how far along her pregnancy was, according to the arrest warrant.
The police arrest warrant said Moore caused the death of a “human being who was born alive and survived for one hour. Under Georgia law, the victim became a person at the moment of live birth.”
In a statement, the Southeast Georgia Health System said it was unable to comment on the case.
The Georgia Life Alliance, an anti-abortion nonprofit, said the charges were standard for the alleged situation. “This innocent baby girl was born alive and under Georgia law, her death is being investigated and prosecuted like any other,” Elizabeth Edmonds, executive director of the alliance, said in a March 20 statement.
The nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights, which supports abortion care access, said no woman should be put in jail for the outcome of her pregnancy.
“Abortion bans don’t stop people from seeking abortions, they only force them to do so outside the formal medical system,” Rachana Desai Martin, the center’s chief U.S. program officer, said in a statement.
Moore has a hearing scheduled March 23.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia police accuse woman of murder, citing heartbeat abortion law
