The Terrifying Convergence of Fetal Personhood Laws and Abortion Bans

A Georgia woman was charged with murder for an alleged abortion. “Fetal personhood” laws may be as much to blame as the state’s abortion ban.

In March, when Georgia police arrested a 31-year-old mother, alleged that she’d had an abortion, and charged her with murder, the woman’s mugshot circulated far faster than the facts did. An officer with the Kingsland police claimed that in December, they had been “alerted to suspicious circumstances involving a pregnant female patient” by a hospital security guard. At the time, according to a police report reviewed by The New Republic, the police seized a pill bottle containing misoprostol, an FDA-approved medication that one officer mischaracterized as a “narcotic.” Months later, officers arrested Alexia Moore, who sat in jail for more than two weeks while local news told her story using sources that were almost exclusively from law enforcement. A separate police report asserted that “medical staff” had “knowledge that the baby had a beating heart and was struggling to breathe,” and alleged that Moore, by “her own verbal admission,” intended to end her pregnancy.

But as Moore’s mother told a reporter, this was merely the word of one officer versus her daughter’s. The focus has been on what Moore allegedly said and did, and whether she violated Georgia’s abortion ban, while the conduct of the police, as documented by the police themselves, has gone comparatively unscrutinized. Why were they going after this woman in the first place? Could the charges they brought against her, of malice murder and possession of a dangerous drug, even apply? Georgia’s feticide statute excludes “any woman with respect to her unborn child,” and Georgia courts have held that the state’s controlled substances law cannot be applied to a fetus. Even should their case against Moore fall apart, should must we expect more such arrests, as more and more people in Georgia self-manage their abortions, and more do so later in pregnancy?

As the story spread, it understandably caused fear. It also spread stigma and misinformation. And along the way, something quite fundamental has been lost: Whether or not the Georgia abortion ban was violated in this case, the ban is certainly to blame for it. When a ban makes abortion nearly impossible to obtain lawfully, pregnant people exercising control over ending their own pregnancies are made potential criminals by a state that is determined to control them. This is due to the law—but not only the law.

Commonly referred to as the Georgia........

© New Republic