Black Woman Charged With Murder For Taking Abortion Pills

A Georgia district attorney (DA) and a Superior Court judge are raising concerns after officials charged a Black woman for taking abortion pills. While the state argues the 31-year-old woman’s actions constitute murder, a conservative judge in the case has ruled in her favor, marking a rare win for pregnant people following the overturning of Roe v Wade.

Alexia Moore spent almost three weeks in a Camden County jail after she was arrested in Savannah, according to WOWT News. Authorities accused her of violating the state’s “heartbeat” law– the anti-abortion bill passed in 2019, preventing an abortion after a fetus’s heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks. Moore’s case is reportedly the first in Georgia of a woman charged for having an abortion since the law passed, but even some Republican officials are putting the brakes on.

Moore first caught the attention of local authorities after a visit to a hospital in December 2025, the Guardian reported. There, she complained about abdominal pain and told doctors she’d taken oxycodone and misoprostol– a drug commonly used in medication abortions. Medical records show Moore was approximately 22 weeks pregnant.

During a recent hearing, Republican DA Keith Higgins agreed with Moore’s defense lawyer, Kelly Turner, that bringing murder charges against Moore is “on a factual and merit basis” very problematic. And given that Kingsland Police Department charged Moore without his office’s support, Higgins doesn’t want the case to see a grand jury.

Although the DA stopped short of dropping the charges completely, it was more than enough to convince the judge to release the 31-year-old from custody on a $1 bond for the murder charge and an additional $2,000 for two drug-related charges, according to the Current.

“I have concerns that the state would ever be able to secure a conviction of malice murder,” said Judge Stephen Blackerby, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. The $1 bond is more symbolic than anything, especially given Georgia’s recent history with Adriana Smith, a pregnant brain-dead women forced to be kept alive until giving birth by cesarean section, as we previously reported.

Georgia is one of several states that have adopted strict abortion bans within the past decade. The “heartbeat” bill makes little to no exception for pregnant people carrying longer than six weeks. But while the conservative legislation was regarded as a victory for religious and conservative groups, it’s Black women who suffer the most.

Black women disproportionately accounted for abortion procedures before the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to Pew Research. But even without protections from Roe, Black women still have the highest levels of abortions in the country. Pregnancy-related deaths since 2022 increased for Black women in anti-abortion states, like Georgia, Texas and Alabama, according to the 19th News.

While Moore still has a long way to go in court, her mother, Rosalyn Jones, viewed her release as a major win. “Have you ever heard of someone having a murder charge with $1 bail?” she asked. “From looking at the evidence, I’m not the judge or the jury. All I can see is God has given her favor, that’s all I know.”