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.
She aborted at 28 weeks. That's nearly 6 and a half months pregnant. Most babies can survive outside the womb when they're around 22 to 23 weeks. This was a baby, not some tiny fetus.
You're right, it's not Facebook's business, but this 17-year old and her mother chose to discuss a crime on Facebook's platform. Facebook had a legal obligation to hand over those messages because they were served a valid warrant.
Yeah, this really shouldn't be a case people who support abortion rights should stand behind, but I think the focus is on how their chat history might have been compromised, although I´m not sure what people were expecting on that end either. The fediverse will also eventually have to deal with requests from law enforcement as well, too.
If you private message someone else on a web service, your entire conversation is saved on their servers. If you have an app on your phone, then it can be designed to store the messages locally.
The reason the investigation was started wasn't because someone peaked in on it, it was because there was a buried dead baby.