A 31-year-old U.S. Army veteran and mother of two faces an attempted murder charge in Georgia after police say she tried to induce an abortion.
Alexia Moore, who is from a coastal county in southeast, Georgia, is also charged with possession of a controlled substance and a dangerous drug. If state prosecutors pursue the murder charge, it would be the first case of its kind under Georgia’s six-week abortion ban.
Moore took the pregnancy-terminating medication, Misoprostol, which she got online, according to arrest reports obtained by Scripps News. Moore also took oxycodone, which she obtained “off the street,” according to the police report.
After experiencing severe pain, she was rushed to Southeast Georgia Health System Camden Campus hospital in late December. Doctors delivered a severely premature infant who had trouble breathing and died shortly after birth, according to the police report.
Court documents show police learned from medical staff that the baby appeared to be in its second trimester. Arrest documents estimate Moore was about 22 to 24 weeks pregnant, which is far past the state's abortion ban of six weeks. It is unclear if Moore knew how long she had been pregnant before she took the medication.
RELATED STORY | Trump administration seeks pause in Louisiana abortion pill lawsuit
In Georgia, once embryonic cardiac activity, or a heartbeat, is detected, a pregnancy cannot be terminated. However, medical experts have repeatedly stated that six weeks is before many women even know they are pregnant.
Legal experts and advocates have long warned that Georgia’s six-week ban, which has been in place since 2022.
“In that time, thousands and thousands of people have been able to access abortion care. So we cannot equate a six-week ban with a total abortion ban,” Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director at Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, told Scripps News.
Jackson said she hopes that prosecutors understand the limits of the ban, whereby enforcement has largely targeted healthcare providers and not pregrant women.
"While we understand the limits of the six-week ban as it is written currently on how providers can move, how providers cannot provide care, there's currently nothing written in the six-week ban that criminalizes the pregnant person. So we have to be very careful about how we, again, sort of test and stretch the interpretations of law," Jackson said.
“Abortion is still legal in the state of Georgia. Medication abortion is incredibly safe and is also still legal in the State of Georgia, and so what I hope will happen is that prosecutors will better understand the limits of the law and will dismiss these charges and let the accused person be able to go back to their family,” she added.
Moore is currently being held in a Camden County jail without bond. A hearing is scheduled for Monday.
