- Media outlets inaccurately suggested a 17-year-old girl was being prosecuted for obtaining an illegal late-term abortion and centered their coverage on the role of big tech in enforcing abortion restrictions. Vice reported that
- Facebook complied with the warrant and handed over their messages, which revealed the mother had obtained abortion pills to terminate her daughter’s 28-week pregnancy and the two had buried the baby and discussed digging the body up to burn it, according to Vice.
Police received a warrant to review the Facebook messages of a mom and her daughter. The mother was suspected of killing her child and concealing and mishandling the corpse.
News outlets inaccurately suggested a 17-year-old girl was being prosecuted for obtaining an illegal late-term abortion in recent headlines about a Nebraska case.
Numerous outlets covering the story emphasized Facebook’s role in the prosecution of this abortion-related case and highlighted concerns about tech companies protecting people’s data in light of new abortion restrictions going into effect. The baby’s late gestational date, concealment of corpse and suspicious autopsy which led to the warrant for the Facebook messages were not mentioned in headlines.
Vice, NBC News, Daily Beast, USA Today, Bloomberg and CBS News also ran headlines that emphasized Facebook’s compliance with the police warrant and failed to note the baby’s late gestational age and the alleged attempts to conceal and destroy the corpse.
“Facebook gave Nebraska cops Teen’s DMs. They Used Them To Prosecute Her For Having An Abortion,” a Forbes headline said; in reality the teen who had the abortion was charged for her handling of the corpse and failure to report what she told police had been a stillbirth, and only her mother was charged with the abortion. Vice similarly said the data was being used to “Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion” in its headline, and NBC’s headline said “mother and daughter now charged over abortion.”
“Abortion rights activists, digital privacy experts, and anyone who is concerned about privacy in the United States have raised fears that people’s digital communications, location data, period app tracking information, or other private data will be used against them to criminalize abortion,” the Vice article read.
“Much of what has been reported about Meta’s involvement in the criminal case against a Nebraska mother and her daughter is simply wrong,” Meta stated in a press statement. On June 7, Meta wrote in a press release that she received legal warrants from the local police, just before Dobbs (v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) was decided by the Supreme Court. These warrants didn’t mention abortion. Court documents indicate that police were at that time investigating the alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn infant.”
Jessica Burgess allegedly gave the teen abortion pills when she was 28 weeks pregnant, then the two of them allegedly concealed the baby’s corpse and discussed a plan to dig it up and burn it over Facebook messages, prosecutors said, according to Vice. Nebraska has the same 20-week abortion limit it had before Roe v. Wade was overturned; children have survived after being delivered at as young as 21 weeks and routinely survive at 24 weeks. Vice reports that
Celeste Burgess and Jessica Burgess first told police that the baby was unexpectedly delivered stillborn. However, an autopsy could not determine if the child had died from drowning in the bag in which it was placed. Vice reports that authorities sought a warrant to access the communications of the women to establish if the baby had died or been stillborn. Meta, Facebook’s parent, gave the messages to police as a response to a warrant for improperly handling a human body. The two seem to have discussed obtaining and using a two-step abortive pill regime and then burning “evidence”, which was shared with Vice through the warrant.
” “Thought you would be happy to hear that the stuff was in,” her mother wrote in one text.
” “Yes, I’ll finally be able wear jeans,” she replied.
This is how news outlets decided to headline the story of a mother who killed her daughter’s 23-week-old baby at their house, burned and buried the body, talked about it in Facebook dms, had them seized by a search warrant, and were charged with multiple crimes for it. pic.twitter.com/SIJNatjfoE
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 10, 2022
Police charged Celeste Burgess, the 17-year-old, with a felony count for “removing/ concealing/ abandoning dead human body” and two misdemeanors related to concealing a person’s death and false reporting, according to Vice. The teen’s mother received felony charges for performing an illegal abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation, performing an abortion as a non-licensed doctor and concealing a dead human body along with two misdemeanor chargers.”Celeste Burgess talks about how she can’t wait to get this ‘thing’ out of her body and reaffirms it with Jessica Burgess that they will burn the evidence afterwards,” BenMcBride, a detective investigating the case, wrote in an affidavit requesting permission to seize the Burgess’ electronics, according to Vice.
” I know that criminals often have conversations through social media sites about their crimes. Data, hardware and software are evidence and instrumentalities in this crime, he stated.
The Madison County police department in Nebraska did not reply to Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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