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georgia
Georgia Judge Denounces Murder Charge in Abortion Case as 'Extremely Problematic'
States that have criminalized abortion are "getting much more explicit" in pushing to prosecute women for obtaining abortion care, said one rights advocate.
Mar 24, 2026
A state judge in Georgia on Monday set a bail payment at just $1 for a woman who was charged with murder earlier this month after she took abortion pills to end a pregnancy—a charge about which Judge Steven G. Blackerby of State Superior Court expressed extreme skepticism.
“I think that charge is extremely problematic,” Blackerby said during a hearing that the woman, Alexia Moore, attended virtually. “That is going to be a hard charge to convict upon.”
District Attorney Keith Higgins, who is overseeing the case against Moore, also did not appear convinced that the 31-year-old should be imprisoned for the medication abortion she had last December. He told the judge that "whatever bond the defendant can make that will allow her to get out of jail is appropriate," and noted that police in Kingsland, Georgia had brought charges against Moore without his office's support.
Higgins said he was not ready to drop the murder charge altogether, but said he was also not prepared to present the case to a grand jury.
Moore had been in jail for about two weeks when the hearing took place. Investigators in Kingsland accused her of “unlawfully and with malice aforethought [causing] the death of Baby Girl Moore.” In addition to malice murder they charged her with possession of a controlled substance and a dangerous drug.
She was rushed to Southeast Georgia Health Center on December 30 after experiencing severe abdominal pain. Court records showed Moore told the medical staff she had taken about eight pills of misoprostol, a pill that can be used for medication abortion, and oxycodone for pain. She went into labor at the hospital and delivered a baby who was determined to be in the second trimester of development. The baby was declared dead about an hour after birth.
She said she had bought the medication online and believed herself to be less than 14 weeks pregnant.
The Kingsland Police Department did not specifically cite Georgia's six-week abortion ban—which the state Supreme Court has allowed to remain in effect despite a Superior Court ruling that permanently enjoined the ban and found it unconstitutional—but The New York Times reported that documents supporting the department's arrest warrant "echoed aspects of the ban, including saying that 'the baby was well beyond six weeks of conception.'"
The police said Moore was charged with murder because “the victim became a person at the moment of live birth.”
Higgins acknowledged in court that the malice murder charge may not meet "factual and merit" standards, and both Blackerby and Kelly Turner, Moore's defense attorney, noted that Georgia law prohibits the criminalization of someone who has induced an abortion on themself.
The Current, a Georgia-based outlet, also reported that "privacy issues" are likely to be scrutinized in court if the district attorney continues to pursue the case.
"A security guard at Southeast Georgia Health Center in St. Marys called police after medical staff said that Moore had ingested abortion medication and the infant was older than six weeks, according to police records, which also cited Moore’s previous abortion history," reported The Current.
Turner argued in court that Moore legally procured the misoprostol and noted that her blood tests and hospital records did not show Oxycodone in her system.
"Today’s decision is a reminder that justice is not served by accusation alone," said Don Plummer, press officer for the Georgia Public Defender Council, which is representing Moore.
Author and advocate Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day emphasized after Moore's arrest that the murder charge shows how states that have criminalized abortion care are "getting much more explicit" about the anti-choice movement's desire to punish women for obtaining abortions—even though in the past, laws have typically avoided prosecuting them.
A 31-year-old in Georgia has been arrested and charged with murder for allegedly ending her pregnancy with abortion medication.
Here’s what we know: pic.twitter.com/EXAcMqEdak
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 16, 2026
The district attorneys of Georgia's four largest counties pledged in 2019, after the passage of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, that they would not prosecute people who obtain abortions.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, women in states including Kentucky, Ohio, and South Carolina have faced charges for obtaining abortion care and for suffering pregnancy loss. An Ohio woman sued medical providers last year for conspiring with police to fabricate a criminal case against her; she had been charged with felony abuse of a corpse after having a miscarriage, but a grand jury declined to indict her.
"I really hope that people are paying attention to this," said Valenti of the attempt to bring charges against Moore. "They really are counting on us being too overwhelmed to act, so it's incredibly, incredibly important that we let them know we're paying attention."
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Rights Groups Urge Court to Prevent Trump DOJ From Misusing Voter Files Seized in Georgia
“We have very serious concerns about what the Trump administration could do with the voting records of thousands of people from Fulton County."
Feb 16, 2026
Civil rights organizations are demanding that a federal court place restrictions on the Trump administration's use of materials seizedduring its unprecedented raid on an elections center in Fulton County, Georgia in January.
Five groups—the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP, the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda—on Monday asked the Atlanta Division of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to bar the administration from using any materials seized from the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations center for anything other than the criminal investigation outlined in the search warrant used to justify the raid.
Among other things, this would bar the administration from using materials taken from the center for voter roll maintenance, election administration, or the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
The groups argued the constraints are necessary to enforce "statutory protections for the right to vote, voter privacy, and ballot secrecy, which are fundamentally critical given the unprecedented assaults on the administration of elections."
Additionally, the groups asked the court to force the administration to create and publicly disclose a full inventory of materials seized from the voting center, as well as a catalog of all people who have accessed the materials during the investigation.
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, claimed that the seizure of materials related to the 2020 presidential election was a continuation of Trump's years-long quest to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden.
Hewitt also warned the raid on the Fulton County elections center should be seen as part of an assault on voter rights throughout the US.
"These actions are part of a larger pattern," he explained. "We are witnessing a broad-scale assault on fair elections on many fronts, from going after voting records and squeezing out Black voters through redistricting, to improperly purging voters from the rolls and making it harder for everyone to vote. Some have called what we are witnessing a ‘soft coup’. Whatever we call it, we must all understand that our democracy is at risk."
Robert Weiner, director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the seizure of materials raised major privacy issues for Fulton County voters.
"We have very serious concerns about what the Trump administration could do with the voting records of thousands of people from Fulton County," said Weiner. "We are talking about sensitive private information. After the DOGE disaster, voters need to be confident their private information is in safe and trustworthy hands."
The FBI last month executed a search warrant at the Fulton County election center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Shortly after the raid, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory predicted that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target," Ivory said. "But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue."
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Trump Effort 'To Rig Our Elections Is Well Underway,' Experts Warn
One expert expressed fear that "something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been."
Feb 12, 2026
A pair of experts warned this week that President Donald Trump is clearly telegraphing his intention to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections.
Stephen Richer, former recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, said during an interview with The Atlantic published Wednesday that he's grown worried that "something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been."
When asked to flesh out how Trump could potentially rig the upcoming elections, Richer said it was unlikely that he would deploy US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to polling places across the country, if for no other reason than he lacks the manpower to accomplish such an operation.
However, Richer did express concern about the president's ability to muddy waters in tight races and put pressure on his Republican allies to refuse to seat Democratic winners when he is claiming there are disputes about the results.
"Where I think President Trump is most potent is still in the post-election procedures," he explained, "still in sowing doubt in the minds of enough Americans that they don’t think the elections are legitimate and, therefore... the Congress doesn’t have to seat its new members. That’s certainly a popular theory that’s floating about: that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the outgoing speaker, will choose not to seat the new members, because they’re in allegedly disputed elections."
Richer argued that California could be particularly vulnerable to this, since the state infamously takes so long to finish tallying its votes.
In a New York Times editorial published Thursday, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center for Justice's voting rights and elections program, argued that Trump's "campaign to rig our elections is well underway," and he pointed to the president's mass pardon last year of rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 as the beginning of his election subversion campaign.
"We have every reason to expect more actions like these in the coming months," wrote Morales-Doyle. "A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump reiterated his threats to prosecute election officials who ran the 2020 election. Just days later, FBI agents seized ballots and election records from 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia."
However, Morales-Doyle also said there was reason to believe that the American system can withstand the president's assault on its election integrity, and he gave a nod toward several efforts across the country to fight back, including states resisting Trump's demands to hand over their voter rolls and Democrats refusing to let new voter suppression legislation pass through Congress.
"We are already seeing how effective people can be in pushing back," he concluded, "whether on the streets of Minneapolis or at town halls hosted by their representatives in Congress. It will be incumbent on all of us—election officials, advocates, state law enforcement, and voters—to see the administration’s efforts for what they are and to fight back."
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