(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

2022-08-09 18:44:59.861000+00:00

A 17-year-old girl and her mother have been charged with a series of felonies and misdemeanors after an apparent medication abortion at home in Nebraska. The state’s case relies on evidence from the teenager’s private Facebook messages, obtained directly from Facebook by court order, which show the mother and daughter allegedly bought medication to induce abortion online, and then disposed of the body of the fetus. While the court documents, obtained by Motherboard, allege that the abortion took place before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June, they show in shocking detail how abortion could and will be prosecuted in the United States, and how tech companies will be enlisted by law enforcement to help prosecute their cases.

Jessica Burgess is charged with five crimes (three felonies, including "perform/attempt abortion at > 20 weeks, perform abortion by non-licensed doctor, and removing/concealing a dead human body). Celeste is charged with one felony, "removing/concealing/abandoning dead human body" and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting. She is being tried as an adult. Some details of the case were earlier reported by the Lincoln Journal-Star and Forbes . Motherboard is publishing the search warrants and court records that show specifically how the case is being prosecuted.

According to court records, Celeste Burgess, 17, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, bought medication called Pregnot designed to end pregnancy. Pregnot is a kit of mifepristone and misoprostol, which is often used to safely end pregnancy in the first trimester. In this case, Burgess was 28-weeks pregnant, which is later in pregnancy than mifepristone and misoprostol are recommended for use. It’s also later than Nebraska’s 20-week post-fertilization abortion ban , which makes allowances only if the pregnant person is at risk of death or "serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function." (Nebraska’s abortion laws have not changed since Roe v Wade was overturned).

In June, the state submitted a search warrant to Meta, Facebook's parent company, demanding all private data—including DMs—that the company had for the Burgesses. According to an affidavit submitted along with the search warrant, Ben McBride a detective with the Norfolk, Nebraska Police Division had been investigating the alleged abortion. The family told him that Celeste had unexpectedly "given birth prematurely supposedly to a stillborn child." Celeste "then enacted the help of her mother, Jessica Burgess, and the two of them buried the child together. Both of the Burgess' were telling others they needed to dig the child's body up and then burn it."

In a financial affidavit mother Jessica Burgess said she has a total of $400 to her name, and requested a public defender, writing that she’d lost her job “due to this situation.” (Burgess now seems to be represented by a private attorney.). Both women were arrested and held on a $10,000 bond, but jail records indicate they’ve been released.

After taking the medication, according to court documents, Celeste gave birth to a stillborn fetus. She and her mother allegedly enlisted the help of a 22-year-old man to bury the fetus, and later discussed via Facebook DM burning it to dispose of it. (The man, Tanner Barnhill, is charged with attempting to conceal the death of another person, a misdemeanor.) An autopsy report suggested the fetus was stillborn.

McBride's affidavit states explicitly that police exhumed the fetus. "An exact cause [of death] was unknown but the lungs didn't indicate they'd ever contained any air." A final autopsy report "stated the cause of death was undetermined. The findings were consistent with the fetus being stillborn but the placement of the fetus into a plastic bag raise the possibility of asphyxia due to suffocation."

[Do you work at Facebook? Do you know of any other cases where Facebook or another tech company has provided information about an abortion to law enforcement? Reach out to [email protected] or securely on Signal: 202-505-1702]

McBride told the court that law enforcement needed evidence from Facebook in order to determine "whether the baby was stillborn or asphyxiated."

A court approved the search warrant, and Facebook complied with it, according to other court records. The Facebook messages appear to show Celeste and Jessica talking about taking abortion medication:

Celeste: "Are we starting it today?" Jessica: "We can if u want the one will stop the hormones" Celeste: "Ok" Jessica: "Ya the 1 pill stops the hormones an rehn [sic] u gotta wait 24 HR 2 take the other" Celeste: "Ok" Celeste: "Remember we burn the evidence"
[END]

[1] URL: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zevd/this-is-the-data-facebook-gave-police-to-prosecute-a-teenager-for-abortion
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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