Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges
Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges
Unencrypted chat history is a prime target for police
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605
A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.
You're viewing a single thread.
What year is it
1984
1984 indeed..
However, private chat messages are only one component in a whole range of digital evidence that is likely to be used by police to prosecute illegal abortions in the United States. Investigators will be able to request access to many data sources, including digital health records, Google search history, text messages, and phone location data.
Obligatory:
A racist, a snitch, a plagiarist and a rapist walk into a bar. The bartender asks: "How's the new book coming mr. Orwell?"
Also to the "well he only snitched on evil Stalinists" Radlibs, that's not even true. He snitched on social democrats like you. He was never a friend of the proletariat.
Social democrats like you
wha? ok?
Not you, the hypothetical person I quoted.
understandable
1684
This is what "Freedom & Family" means, apparently!
She was 7 months pregnant. That baby is viable outside the womb in many scenarios. It’s disgusting to abort a child at that point. The local law allows abortions up to 5 months into the pregnancy (20 weeks). That’s plenty of time to make a decision, and a pretty liberal allowance. Prosecution of this mother and daughter is justified and there is nothing wrong with Meta complying with the info request.
The article:
Court and police records show that police began investigating 17-year-old Celeste Burgess and her mother Jessica Burgess after receiving a tip-off that the pair had illegally buried a stillborn child given birth to prematurely by Celeste. The two women told detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk, Nebraska Police Division that they’d discussed the matter on Facebook Messenger, which prompted the state to issue Meta with a search warrant for their chat history and data including log-in timestamps and photos.
From Motherboard (where you also can read court documents):
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.
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).
Right, which is exactly what I said…
Yes, I’m not arguing or anything, I forgot to mention I appreciated the added context you provided. Just wanted to further expand on it for those wanting to get more context, as it seems to be a lot of people in the thread that didn’t read the article
Thanks for adding some nuance that people might miss if they just read the headline. This girl broke some long established abortion laws by aborting at 7 months like you said. She is definitely in the wrong here.
At the same time, I don't like meta for violating people's privacy and working with law enforcement. Make law enforcement do their own jobs.
Still, I don't feel sorry for them. These women definitely dug their own hole. You think it would be obvious to people by now to not talk about illegal things on any social media, especially meta.
Also, meta was served a search warrant. They were required by law to comply.
I’m trying, but it seems that unfortunately Lemmy is yet another platform chock full of people so hard left that they downvote an opinion that 7 months pregnant is a bit too far along to have an abortion… it’s insane to me that 7 months is even a debate. I’m pro-abortion up to a point. That point starts to become concerning after the first trimester. This baby was in the third trimester…
You would want to force a 17 year old (or any person) to go through pregnancy and childbirth because you personally feel that's the right thing to do? What about her rights? Does she lose them by getting impregnated? Because that's what you are wanting to enforce.
No not at all. Just don't get an abortion at 7 months. Literally doctors won't do it because it's unethical at that point. Did you even read the article? Like she took a bunch of drugs illegally to abort a fetus that could just about live outside the womb.
I am extremely pro choice, but we have a cutoff point for it that science has established to prevent cruelty.
But why is that a choice society makes for her body? I have asked that elsewhere but never get an answer from people who feel women should be forced to childbirth at a certain point: do you think people should be forced to donate organs?
I don't know why you are bringing up forced childbirth. I already said I was pro choice, and I am even antinatalist.
She made the choice to not abort until 7 months. Thats the problem here. At a certain point the fetus is considered a human and you cross the line into murder. Medical science has determined that point to be around 5- 6 months. I believe women should have every right to abort before the point the fetus is considered conscious.
When someone is pregnant, at a certain point they have made a human, and you cant just get rid of it like that. There are other options like adoption at that point. I don't know why you can't see the nuance here.
It is still forced childbirth, obviously, because what else are you suggesting? You think after a certain point in pregnancy a woman should have to birth the child so others can adopt it. After a certain point you think the woman loses the right to chose for her own and now society has the right to dictate that she has to continue being pregnant and birth the child. I think it is important to fully realize that this is the consequence of your reasoning.
Okay well once you have created a human it is no longer a choice to kill it. Yes you are forced to give birth to a child at that point due to not getting an abortion before you created a human. Why don't we allow abortions up to 2 years? There's not a big difference between a 7month old fetus and a 2 year old.
Okay well once you have created a human it is no longer a choice to kill it. Yes you are forced to give birth to a child at that point due to not getting an abortion before you created a human. Why don't we allow parents to kill their kids up to 2 years? There's not a big difference between a 7month old fetus and a 2 year old.
Maybe you feel like because the mother made the human it's her property and she can do whatever she wants with it? Big old atheist me, and the rest of the old don't see it that way. Once a human is fully formed, that human has its own right to life. The mother doesn't own it like property, it's a human being at that point with its own rights like you and me.
Then I guess you are for forced organ donations as well.
The baby was nearly fully formed with a face, hands, feet, and a heartbeat that could have survived outside the womb. I implore you to go look up some photos of a 28 week fetus and I guarantee you'll be surprised how much it looks like a normal baby.
Why should we continue birthing children when we already have so many that are insufficiently cared for?
If you, personally, would assume responsibility for this child, great, but otherwise leave it up to the individual.
The morality of having children at all is a separate point entirely. There are countless ways this could have ended or been prevented long before the fetus was viable outside the womb.
Pregnancy can never be 100 % prevented. Unless you sterilise someone. And you do not know the reasons for why this girl didn't go through abortion earlier.
It's disgusting to wish on women that they should lose the rights to their own bodies that easily.
She carried the baby to nearly full term. It had a face, hands, feet, and a heartbeat. It was a living being that could have survived outside the womb. Then she took abortion medication that wasn't meant for pregnancies that far along. I'm not even religious and have always been pro-abortion, but there needs to be a reasonable cut-off point. In 2 and half more months she could have given it up for adoption.
It’s not your decision and should not be the government’s. Only the pregnant person and their doctor matter. Possible input from their parents and/or other potential-parent of the fetus.
You’re giving away your right wingery too easily. When you call a fetus a baby, red flag, but sometimes people just use that (if the fetus is an intended pregnancy and the parent(s) plan to actually have a child, usually). So, in the interest of debate-bro “good faith,” ok.
Referring to abortion as disgusting. Well, that pretty much just ruined anything else you had to say. I bet open heart surgery or getting your arm reset after breaking can be pretty disgusting to most of us who aren’t used to such things. They’re all still medical procedures and their disgustingness or not is completely irrelevant to outsiders to the procedure. And if you’re simply disgusted at the idea of the procedure being done, that meaning, well one choose better words and two, yeah, that’s just reactionary mindset creeping in and spewing out your little fingers. At the end of the day whatever little nuggets of shit were implanted into YOUR brain as a child (such as “abortions are only valid until X arbitrarily decided date”) are irrelevant to the world and to this completely other human being seeking a medical procedure. Long story short: it’s none of your fucking business. A fetus is NOT a baby or a child and you’re purposely wrongly using the word to conflate the two. Again… right wingery…
Prosecution is not warrant for a seeking to obtain medical procedures. This isn’t the year 1647. Please fucking stop.
If you were discussing a purely rhetorical topic on “the moral and ethics of abortions and when they’re done” maybe you’d have some valid points and perhaps, because my brain was also rotted by arbitrary religious deadlines growing up, I’d be inclined to agree with hypothetical “if it were MY gf/wife, I’d want…” whatever to happen. But at the end of the day this isn’t our partner, it wasn’t our body, we aren’t doctors involved in the decision, we aren’t the person’s parent(s), we aren’t fucking Jesus or whatever. It’s not our decision to make, it’s no one’s but the person with the fetus under the care of a qualified physician. Who, btw, very well might be, and I’d assume probably was, advising towards birth and then surrendering for adoption. But it’s not their decision either. Just one single person gets that right with some important advisors along the way. We are none of those people, so, we and the government should probably fuck off forever.
And Zuck can completely fuck himself. Not even going to rant on that because corporations bending over and spreading fully for the government at the slightest hint of a request for private data has been happening for decades. They’re morally bankrupt cowards. Even protected from personal legal liability (by their corporations, which do provide that, unfortunately in most cases) they won’t even attempt to stand up for privacy rights if nothing else. Gross.
7 months is entirely viable and no doctor would recommend an abortion at 7 months barring some painful fatal disease in the fetus (am a physician myself) that’s why it was an illegal sketchy abortion. Even if the life of the mother were in danger it’d be an early delivery that would get performed, not an abortion.
This is the kind of case that the anti abortion rights folks will point to as a reason why abortion should be illegal so for so many people here to support this particular case is wild, you’re doing more harm than good.
You’re not a physician because no physician worth a grain of shit would be concerned about the fetus and not the insane overreach of government forcing the endangerment of the pregnant person’s life.
More right wingery.
If you are concerned with the fetus here in any fashion, sorry to be the first to break the news, but you have a reactionary take on this topic. I’ve been incredibly generous even (which many purists would roast us both alive for) and given that YOU can hold whatever opinions you want on birth and abortion and whatever- but you cannot apply your perceived morality around a medical procedure to other humans. You can say that makes whoever “look bad” all you want, ok, you think I give a fuck about the opinions of reactionaries who support forcing women to birth babies on top of the wars they want to send that future-kid to so that kid can shoot some random poor person in some far off land to enrich aforementioned reactionaries? I’m supposed to bow down to their opinions and their thoughts on me? No. That’s not how any of this works. Now you’ve been informed of what you support and going forward will never have the excuse of ignorance again. I’d suggest you do a little reflection. And stop lying about being a doctor online. No one cares. I’m Jesus Christ btw.
I can't believe you wrote this long a response and tried to dunk on someone without reading the article.
It’s not a “dunk” you debate pervert. It’s informing the uninformed in a generalized fashion.
Reading is hard. School was hard. I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. Someone failed you along the way. I’m sorry that happened to you. If you keep reading and think really really hard, though, it might get better. I can’t promise anything 😔
qualified physician
yeah you clearly still haven't read the article.
This feels like satire. There's no way someone could actually write this without laughing at how absurd it is.
Only the pregnant person and their doctor matter.
They avoided going to a hospital because they didn't want the child, so they gave birth elsewhere. There was no doctor present to give medical advice.
The baby didn't make it because of their negligence, so they burned and buried it.
How in the world could you defend something as gruesome as that? They're monsters.