Woman in the US faces murder charge after failed late-term abortion

A woman in Georgia has been charged with murder after a failed late-term abortion allegedly caused her daughter to die an hour after birth.

Alexia Moore, 31, reportedly went to hospital with abdominal pain after taking the abortion drugs, where she gave birth to a baby girl. Her daughter was estimated to be between 22 and 24 weeks gestation, at which stage babies can often survive outside the womb with assistance. In Georgia, most abortions are banned after six weeks.

If the abortion pills the mother took caused her baby to die in the womb, she would not have been prosecuted. Abortion is decriminalised for the mother in Georgia in legislation similar to that which was voted through the House of Lords last week.

Murder charge

According to the arrest warrant, Moore told a nurse at the hospital: “I know my infant is suffering, because I am the one who did the abortion. I want her to die.”

It adds: “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 warrant explained: “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.”

No accountability

The Georgia Life Alliance Executive Director Elizabeth Edmonds rejected the narrative that abortion was being criminalised, saying: “This innocent baby girl was born alive and under Georgia law, her death is being investigated and prosecuted like any other.”

She noted that instead: “What this case highlights is the danger posed by illegal online abortion pill distributors operating outside the medical system”.

Edmonds explained: “These abortion profiteers prey on women’s fear and desperation, then ship powerful drugs through the mail into states without physician oversight – leading to death and tragedy, with no accountability.”

The Foundation to Abolish Abortion stated on X that if Georgia “did not have loopholes keeping abortion legal for women, this mother would not have attempted an abortion in the first place, and perhaps her precious daughter would still be alive today”.

Endangering women

Last week, during a debate on the Crime and Policing Bill, Peers voted by 185 votes to 148 to reject Baroness Monckton’s amendment to remove Antonia Antoniazzi MP’s controversial Clause 208, which decriminalises abortion up to birth for the mother.

They also voted to reject an amendment by Baroness Stroud to reinstate in-person consultations with a doctor in order to receive abortion pills by 191 votes to 119. A return to such appointments, removed during lockdown, would have better protected against women taking the pills after the ten-week limit they were designed for.

Baroness Monckton warned that the Clause “endangers women” by moving late-term abortions away from a clinical setting.

Dehumanised

The Christian Institute’s Simon Calvert said: “It is unutterably grim that the House of Lords has voted to permit a woman to take the life of her baby just days before birth.

“They have shown little regard for public feeling which is strongly opposed to this. They have dehumanised the unborn to a shocking new degree. And they have abandoned women.

“Those of us who care about the unborn and their mothers must renew our efforts to expose the consequences of what our politicians have done today so that, one day, it can be reversed.”

Voting continued past midnight. An amendment to make it a criminal offence to obtain abortifacients by false representation was defeated but a pro-abortion amendment to delete all past criminal convictions under abortion law was passed by 180 to 58.