Is abortion literally murder?

Setting up a landmark case

Rhetorically speaking, abortion has been called murder for a long time. Now, that assertion may be tested in court.

A new case to watch involves a woman from Kingsland, Georgia who knowingly took pills to abort her unborn baby. Fox 5 Atlanta reports that Alexia Zantail Moore, a 31-year old woman, went into an emergency room on December 30, 2025 complaining of abdominal pains. Moore, who was about 22 weeks pregnant, told doctors that she had taken 8 misoprostol pills, a drug that is used to induce abortion, and the opioid oxycodone.

Moore delivered her baby, which was born with a heartbeat and lived for about an hour. The infant tested positive for oxycodone, but misoprostol does not show up on toxicology reports. Moore said that she got the misoprostol from a group called Access Aid and the oxycodone from a family member.

Moore reportedly told an investigator, "I know my infant is suffering, because I am the one who did the abortion. I want her to die."

Photo credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm/Unsplash.com

Now, Moore is facing charges of murder in the death of her baby girl. Moore was arrested in early March and detained in the Camden County jail. Per the arrest warrant, she “unlawfully and with malice aforethought, caused the death of baby girl Moore, 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.”

Under Georgia law, abortion is illegal after a baby’s heartbeat is detected in most cases. This usually occurs at about six weeks. Moore allegedly told the investigator that she believed that she was at about 14 weeks, but she is not being charged under Georgia’s heartbeat law.

Georgia law also holds that unborn babies are considered legal persons. It is the second law, the personhood law, that is the basis for Moore’s murder charge. Once the baby was born alive, it became a legal person, and in the investigator’s view, Moore was responsible for the baby’s murder.

It’s easy to see Moore as a villain in the case, based on what she told the investigator, but looking deeper, she is also a tragic figure. 19th News gives more background about the accused murderer, an army veteran and the mother of two other children, ages six and nine. Moore was reportedly discharged from the army with 100 percent disability due to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Edith Moore, the mother of the accused and a local pastor, said of her daughter, “As a mother, and me talking as a grandma, she’s an excellent mother. I believe her children are her life. She has been a good provider for her children.”

A friend denied that Moore took abortion pills, saying, “I remember her calling me, freaking out. She was bawling her eyes out. She said she didn’t know what to do.“

She continued, “‘If worse comes to worst,’ I said, ‘If you 100 percent go through with having the baby, and if you don’t want it, you can always give it to me, and you know, it’ll be taken care of.’”

I am opposed to abortion, but looking deeper at this case shows that the issue isn’t always black and white. I mourn for the loss of Moore’s baby girl, but my heart also breaks for Moore herself, an apparent single mom who is obviously struggling to raise her existing children, with her mental health, and likely with finances as well.

As I’ve written in the past, if pro-lifers really want to reduce abortion, they should focus on reducing demand for abortion, rather than just passing bans. Alexia Moore may be a good example of this. If mental healthcare and assistance in raising and paying for children were more readily available, not to mention low-cost contraceptives, Moore might not have felt the need to abort her baby.

The Camden County DA has reportedly not decided whether to take her case to the grand jury to seek an indictment, but I don’t see that the State of Georgia benefits by paying to keep Alexia Moore in jail alongside violent criminals and drug dealers in the meantime. Her two boys don’t benefit from having their mom incarcerated either.

Maybe this is why abortion bans don’t usually hold mothers criminally liable for the abortions of their babies. Usually, the focus is on prosecuting abortion providers rather than abortion patients. Often, the women are just as much victims as the babies.

But in Moore’s case, the abortion was self-induced. There was no abortion provider. Just an anonymous pharmacist who provided abortion pills (if Moore actually took abortion pills).

With a number of new abortion bans and personhood laws around the country since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, if Camden County decides to prosecute Moore, it is likely to become a landmark legal case. However, my money would be on the county dropping the charges. There would be no winners in a case like this, and I’m skeptical that many DAs would want to go down in history as the first prosecutor to take such a dubious and tragic case to court.

ICE AIRPORT UPDATE Yesterday, I referenced an incident with ICE at the San Francisco airport in which an alleged US citizen was violently detained in front of her daughter. The government says that the pair were being deported to Guatemala when they tried to flee.

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