Teen Charged For Abortion After FB Handed Over DMs

August 9, 2022 Politics, Social Media

Forbes reports:

A Nebraska teenager is facing criminal charges alleging she aborted a fetus in violation of state law, after authorities obtained her Facebook messages using a search warrant. Seventeen-year-old Celeste Burgess, who is being tried as an adult along with her mother Jessica Burgess, is awaiting trial in Madison County District Court on charges that they broke a Nebraska law banning abortions after 20 weeks.

This marks one of the first instances of a person’s Facebook activity being used to incriminate her in a state where abortion access is restricted — a scenario that has remained largely hypothetical in the weeks following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Nebraska currently outlaws abortions beyond 20 weeks. On Monday, Republican lawmakers in the state failed to secure enough votes to decrease that window to 12 weeks.

The Lincoln Journal-Star reports:



In early June, the two women were each charged with removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body, a felony, and a pair of misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person; and false reporting. But the investigation wasn’t over.

A week after the two were charged, the detective served a search warrant on Facebook, to get access to their accounts. He found messages between them suggesting Jessica Burgess had obtained abortion pills for her daughter, and gave her instructions on how to take them.

Tags

© joemygod.com 2025