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The US charges a 17-year-old girl with an abortion after reviewing her Facebook conversations

2022-08-10T11:26:15.672Z


Zuckerberg's company gave private data by court order to the security forces, which have served as the basis for accusing the girl and her mother


Jessica Burgess is 41 years old and her daughter Celeste, 18. Both have been charged by the court in Madison County (Nebraska, USA) for an illegal abortion.

Celeste's, carried out when she was 17 years old and around 23 weeks pregnant, when in that state it is prohibited to do so beyond the 20th week. According to the Prosecutor's Office, the mother bought and gave the abortion pills to the adolescent and then helped her to bury the fetus.

The investigation includes two pages of a conversation between the two on April 20 on Facebook Messenger about the purchase and use of these pills.

The case, complicated by the circumstances, has once again sharpened the debate raised months ago —even before the Supreme Court struck down the federal protection of abortion—,

In this case, the investigation began in April, after another woman, an alleged friend of Celeste's, told police that she had seen her take the first pill in April, according to a sworn statement from Detective Ben McBride of the police. Norfolk, which collects EFE.

From there, the investigations began.

At the beginning of June, both were accused of a serious crime, that of theft, concealment or abandonment of a body;

and of two minors, hiding the death of another person and false accusation.

That's when the investigators requested the mother's personal information since April 15: photographs, audios and videos, private messages and other account information.

They wanted to know if she had committed other crimes.

More information

The repeal of abortion in the United States is cruel to minors

Thus, a search warrant was sent and Facebook's parent company, Meta, searched, collected and delivered the messages.

“One pill slows down the hormones and then you have to wait 24 hours to take the second one,” Burgess tells her daughter, who tells him that she had received the order they had placed a month ago.

"Remember that we burn the evidence when everything is out," Celeste replies.

It was those private conversations that served as the basis for adding felony illegal abortion charges against Burgess, and mounting the case.

The two were charged in July and pleaded "not guilty";

Celeste, who has already turned 18, is already being prosecuted as an adult, at the request of prosecutors.

The Facebook statement

On Tuesday, Facebook issued a statement arguing that "much of the reporting about Meta's role in a criminal case against a mother and daughter in Nebraska is totally wrong" and that they wanted to "take the opportunity to let things go." clear”.

“We received valid legal orders from the local police on June 7, before the Supreme Court decision.

The orders did not mention abortion at all.

Court documents indicate that police were investigating at the time the alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn baby.

The orders were accompanied by confidentiality orders, which prevented us from sharing information about them.

The orders have now been lifted, ”they explain in that statement, which Meta spokesman Andy Stone also shared in a few tweets.

Once the case was known, the debate and protests came and spread through social networks.

For a few hours, the hashtag

DeleteFacebook

[Delete Facebook] has gone viral.

One such post is by Olivia Julianna, an activist and member of Gen-Z for Change, an NGO run by youth to make changes to that generation.

“A lot of people are missing the point here.

Regardless of what was in those messages, they thought she had an abortion.

They cited Facebook, which cooperated without opposition, for more information.

This precedent is dangerous.

This will put people at risk,” Julianna tweeted in a thread Tuesday night, which she headed with a message that read “every woman should delete Facebook right now.

#DeleteFacebook [delete Facebook]”.

This issue, that of the privacy of women's data on the Internet related to reproductive rights, has been the subject of debate in the United States for months.

Almost a year ago, in September 2021, Texas Right to Life, the largest ultra-conservative organization in the southern state, opened a website that allowed anyone believed to have been linked to an abortion to be anonymously denounced.

And it is not only the moment in which the voluntary termination of pregnancy occurs, but much earlier.

When the Supreme Court overturned

Roe v. Wade

[the precedent that guaranteed abortion throughout the country], American women began to fear the data they left in applications to monitor menstruation.

HIPAA, the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, mandates professional secrecy in abortion consultations.

An obligation that also applies to medical insurance.

However, neither the companies that save data nor the applications are subject to it.

But

apps

and data titans don't have the same obligation.

So all that information that women put there can become evidence of a crime, abortion, depending on the legislation of each State.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-08-10

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