News reports circulated this week claiming that a Georgia woman was charged with murder for having an illegal abortion, but Georgia’s pro-life law doesn’t criminalize women who have abortions — in fact, no U.S. state does.
EWTN News took a closer look at the matter and found that the woman, Alexia Moore, was arrested for allegedly ingesting illegal opioids into her system while pregnant, leading to the death of her infant an hour after the baby was born.
Why was Alexia Moore arrested?
“Baby Girl Moore,” the infant daughter of Alexia Moore, died an hour after she was born, her system filled with oxycodone.
“I know my infant is suffering, because I am the one who did the abortion. I want her to die,” Moore said of her newborn baby girl, according to the arrest warrant.
Moore took eight misoprostol pills and “introduced illegal oxycodone into the infant’s system,” the arrest warrant read.
“Moore unlawfully and with malice aforethought caused the death of Baby Girl Moore, a human being who was born alive and survived for one hour,” the arrest warrant alleges.
The warrant defines personhood as occurring at the moment of birth, not conception or fetal cardiac activity.
“Under Georgia law, the victim became a person at the moment of live birth,” the warrant stated. “Moore’s intent to kill is established by her own verbal admission that she wanted the infant to die and her knowledge that the infant was suffering due to her actions.”
“By intentionally ingesting high doses of misoprostol at 22-24 weeks of gestation and introducing illegal oxycodone into the infant’s system, Moore committed an unlawful act that directly resulted in the infant’s respiratory failure and death,” the warrant read.
Survival rates are low for babies born prematurely, and her baby was born at 22-24 weeks’ gestation, or about five-and-a-half to six months pregnant.
Moore allegedly acquired the misoprostol from Access Aid, an abortion pill provider that sends abortion drugs to anywhere in the U.S., according to the website. The pill bottle was not prescribed by a licensed physician, according to the arrest report.
The warrant said Moore said she’d had three previous abortions, two in recent years and one when she was 15 years old. Moore told staff she had taken the pills “so many times, I do not remember,” according to the warrant.
Local pro-life group responds to ‘misleading’ reports
Under the headline “Woman charged with attempted murder under Georgia abortion law,” a local news article claimed that the Baby Girl Moore story has to do with “the complex and fraught nature of Georgia’s controversial law, known as the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act.” Other outlets made similar claims.
Georgia’s LIFE Act, a pro-life law passed in 2019, protects unborn children when their heartbeats are detectable. This law was not mentioned in the arrest report; instead, the arrest warrant cited Georgia’s law that a baby is a person at the moment of live birth, prompting law officials to make an arrest for alleged murder.
The LIFE Act, which went into effect in 2020, defines an unborn child with a detectable heartbeat as a “natural person” under the law but did not repeal already-existing codes that bar the prosecution of women for having abortions. Claims that the Georgia LIFE Act, also known as a “heartbeat bill,” would enable law enforcement to arrest women for having abortions have been repeatedly debunked.
Georgia Life Alliance Executive Director Elizabeth Edmonds told EWTN News that the arrest involved “the application of laws that have existed for decades.”
“Ms. Moore is not being charged with crimes under Georgia’s LIFE Act,” Edmonds said. “This innocent baby girl was born alive and under Georgia law, her death is being investigated and prosecuted like any other.”
“Efforts to mischaracterize this case as an attack on women or as a consequence of pro-life laws are intentionally misleading and purposefully serve to create further fear and confusion,” Edmonds continued. “This is about the death of a child who was born alive and the application of laws that have existed for decades.”
“The death of this innocent newborn child is a tragic, deeply troubling, and criminal act,” Edmonds said. “According to the arrest warrant, the baby was born alive and fought for her life for more than an hour before tragically dying.”
“The evidence available shows her death was the result of respiratory distress caused by illegally-obtained oxycodone (a schedule II drug) taken by her mother shortly before giving birth,” Edmonds said.
“We grieve the loss of this child and remain committed to advancing a culture where both women and their children are supported, valued, and protected under law,” Edmonds said.
There are no states that criminalize abortion.
Marjorie Dannenfelserpresident of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America
The pro-life movement overwhelmingly opposes the criminalization of women who have abortions. After the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, more than 70 pro-life leaders, including Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, who at the time led the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee, urged lawmakers to not criminalize women who have abortions.
When asked about criminalizing women who abort, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called that view “a hypocrisy.”
“There are no states that criminalize abortion,” Dannenfelser said. “There are some in the movement who are making a lot of noises about criminalizing women who have had abortions. Our approach has always been that we must fight for justice and mercy for women and justice and mercy for children.”
“We’ve been living in a regime for decades that allowed unlimited abortion and to move to pro-life requires, I believe, an attitude not of criminalizing but of serving women and doing everything we can to meet them where they are,” Dannenfelser said.
To women who have had abortions, Dannenfelser encouraged pro-lifers to say: “We will help you. We want to identify all the concerns you have in your life that are often very complicated and sticky and intertwined. We want to be there for you to help you.”
“If you say to them, on the other hand, ‘We’re just going to put you in jail,’ then there’s a hypocrisy at the center of that message,” Dannenfelser said.
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