A woman has been charged with murder in the US after a hospital social worker told officers she took pills to terminate a pregnancy.

Kenlissia Jones is being held at the Dougherty County jail in Georgia on charges of malice murder and possession of a dangerous drug. She was arrested on Saturday after a county social services employee called police to a hospital, officers said.

A social worker at the hospital told police Jones, 23, of Albany, said she had taken four pills she had purchased over the internet “to induce labour” because she and her boyfriend had broken up.

They were also told Jones went into labour and delivered the foetus in a car on the way to the hospital. The police report does not say how far along Jones was but WALB-TV reported earlier that authorities said she was about five and a half months pregnant.

The Dougherty district attorney, Greg Edwards, said on Tuesday he was reviewing the case, but “as of right now she’s still charged”.

Lynn Paltrow, an attorney and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said prosecuting Jones would seem to be at odds with Georgia case law. She noted state law explicitly prohibited prosecuting women for foeticide involving their own pregnancies.

A Georgia appeal court ruled in 1998 that a teenager whose foetus was stillborn after she shot herself in the abdomen could not be prosecuted for performing an illegal abortion. “We don’t believe there is any law in Georgia that allows for the arrest of a woman for the outcome of her pregnancy,” said Paltrow, whose group is offering free legal aid to Jones.

Genevieve Wilson, a director of the anti-abortion group Georgia Right to Life, said it was the first time she had heard of a woman in the state facing a murder charge for ending her pregnancy. Wilson agreed with Paltrow that foeticide and abortion laws in the state had not been used to target women who ended their own pregnancies.

“I am very surprised by the arrest,” Wilson said. “And I’m thinking that perhaps whoever made the arrest may not have known what the laws really are.”

Edwards said he was taking a close look before deciding ultimately whether to follow through with prosecuting Jones. “Those are the issues that we’re trying to unravel,” he said, but declined to discuss details of the case. “We’re looking as best we can at what’s going on with the investigation and the law,” he added.

Jones’ grandmother, Mary Lee Jones, said she did not know her granddaughter was pregnant, but said she often seemed troubled. “I think now, in the position she’s in, she needs to be evaluated,” Mary Lee Jones said. “She’s just not herself.”