Mom and Daughter Charged Over Abortion Due to Facebook Turning Over Their Private Chat Messages

facebook Facebook chat Private Chat abortion

By Joel Brussels , Parent Herald Aug 10, 11:32 am

Photo: (Photo : Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Court documents in Nebraska showed that Facebook turned over the chats of a mother and her daughter to police after they were served with a warrant as part of an investigation into an illegal abortion, according to the Daily Beast.

The investigation, which was launched back in April before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, is one of the few known instances of the social media platform turning over information to help law enforcement officials pursue an abortion case. It is also an example of a scenario that abortion rights experts have warned will become more common as all abortions becomes illegal in many states in the country.

According to Madison County prosecutors, 41-year-old Jessica Burgess acquired and gave abortion pills to her daughter, Celeste, who was just 17 at the time. The mom then helped her daughter bury and then rebury the fetus.

Mom and daughter plead not guilty to abortion charges

The Norfolk Daily News was the first media outlet to report the abortion case. The two were charged last month and both of them have pleaded not guilty. A lawyer for the pair did not respond to a request for comment.

Detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk Police Investigations Unit said in a sworn affidavit that cops started with a tip from a woman who described herself as a friend of Celeste's who said she saw her take the first abortion pill back in April.

Abortion is illegal 20 weeks after an egg is fertilized under a Nebraska law enacted before Roe v. Wade was overturned. According to McBride's affidavit, Burgess suffered a miscarriage when she was around 23 weeks pregnant, soon after she took the abortion pills.

McBride then applied for and got a warrant back in June for access into the digital lives of both the mom and her daughter. They seized six smartphones and seven laptops and compelled Facebook to turn over chats between the two women.

Facebook routinely complies with requests from law enforcement officers

The alleged chats, which were published in court documents seen by NBC News, show a user named Jessica telling a user named Celeste about what she ordered last month and instructing her to take two pills 24 hours apart.

Facebook stores most user information in plaintext on the company's servers, meaning it can access the data if it is compelled to do so with a warrant. Facebook routinely complies with law enforcement requests.

Facebook Messenger offers end-to-end encryption, meaning chats between two users of the app will be visible only on their phones and are not readable by Facebook or any government entity that makes a legal request to the company. But this option is only available to people using the Messenger app on their mobile devices, and messages are only encrypted after users select the option to mark their chats as "secret."

Prosecutors charged Jessica Burgess with two misdemeanors and three felonies and Celeste Burgess with two misdemeanors and a felony. All of their charges were related to performing an abortion, concealing a body and then providing false information.