Police Charge Woman With Murder for Allegedly Taking Abortion Pill, Even Though State Law Says They Can’t

The GOP effort to charge people who get abortions with murder has technically been a series of unsuccessful legislative flops, shot down from South Carolina to Tennessee. Still, that hasn’t stopped multiple Republican-run states from trying to criminalize people who have an abortion, whether they charge them with abuse of a corpse, with improper disposal of remains, or with possession of a controlled substance. Or, in this recent case out of Georgia, they’ll just go ahead and charge them with first-degree murder despite state law making it clear that someone can’t be criminalized for ending a pregnancy. 

Last week, Action News Jax reported that a 31-year-old Black woman in Georgia (who Jezebel will not be naming) was arrested and charged with murder and two counts of drug possession after taking misoprostol, the second pill typically used in a medication abortion. The woman went to the hospital in December after taking the medication, complaining of pain, and the hospital staff alerted local police to a “suspicious circumstance involving a female patient.” Police filed the report on Dec. 30. 

As Autonomy News reports, this is similar to a case from 2015, in which a 23-year-old Black woman was charged with murder after taking abortion pills. Those charges were eventually dropped once officials determined that the law doesn’t allow for prosecuting a pregnant person for ending a pregnancy.

“This is an unprecedented murder charge for an alleged abortion, even though no law in the state of Georgia permits such a charge,” Dana Sussman, Senior Vice President of Pregnancy Justice—which monitors instances of pregnancy criminalization—told Jezebel in a statement. “Do they really want to send women to prison for abortions? This will cause untold harm to this woman and to the women of Georgia.”

Here’s the redacted police incident report. It’s riddled with errors like calling misoprostol a “narcotic” and saying bottle labeled 200mg; evidence logs say 200mcg.

Upshot: woman goes to ER with friend, woman tells HCW, hospital calls police, police interrogates friend, police later arrest woman

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— Susan Rinkunas (@susanrinkunas.com) March 13, 2026 at 9:10 PM

The police report has numerous errors and factual inconsistencies, including referring to misoprostol as a “narcotic,” but a redacted version of it can be found here. It also alleges that police interrogated the woman’s friend in the hospital waiting room, where they seized her “pill bottle.” They do not say how far along the woman was in her pregnancy.

“Across the country, anti-abortion extremists are creating a climate of fear where people can be investigated, prosecuted, or punished for seeking care,” the president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Mini Timmaraju, told Jezebel in a statement. “This isn’t about safety—it’s about control.”

In January, a Kentucky woman was arrested for allegedly self-managing her abortion—using a law that literally included an exemption for pregnant people. (Because of that, the charges were eventually dropped.) Despite the pathetic efforts of many in this country, abortion pills are safe; the anti-abortion movement is not; and telehealth medicine accounted for nearly a third of abortions in the first half of 2025. Regardless of what cops, hospital snitches, or anti-abortion lawmakers would like to believe. 

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