A Black woman in Georgia is facing attempted murder charges under the state’s abortion ban.
31-year-old Alexia Moore was arrested on March 4, a little over two months after she came to Southeast Georgia Health System’s emergency room in Camden Country with abdominal pain on Dec. 30. According to police reports, she was pregnant and had taken an abortion pill after the six-week period that the state allows for pregnancies to be terminated. She is being held in Camden County jail.
According to the Georgia Recorder, a security guard at Southeast Georgia Health System alerted local police to investigate Moore after emergency room staff discovered Moore had attempted an abortion.
Police say that Moore, an Army veteran, had taken Misoprostol, an abortion medication, in her second trimester, along with an unprescribed pill of Oxycodone, an opioid she obtained from a relative, per USA Today. At the hospital, she reportedly delivered a premature fetus with a beating heart that was struggling to breathe, which died after one hour. The arrest warrant for Moore said she delivered 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.”
Since Roe v. Wade, the federal case that legalized abortion throughout the country was overturned in 2022, states like Georgia have tightened their laws around terminating a pregnancy, some like Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana banning the practice almost entirely. The Peach state has some of the most restrictive abortion policies in the country, banning termination after six weeks, and also prohibits state Medicaid or private insurance coverage to be used toward abortion.
Family and friends of Moore have spoken out, saying that Moore struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, which she was diagnosed upon her military discharge, where she was given 100% disability benefits. She also has two children, and was grappling with the idea of having another child, a friend told the Georgia Recorder. Her mother, Edith Moore, told the publication that her daughter was adopted, and endured a lot of hardship in her life, which was compounded by her military service.
“As a mother, I could say that she’s been a good daughter number one, a good person when it comes to her siblings,” Edith told the George Recorder. “She’s a decent person who is caught up in her circumstances.”
Moore is set to have a hearing on March 23.
