About a week after it became known that Meta was using medical information of patients for marketing purposes, the Internet powerhouse is facing another moral obstacle: it turns out that the company provided the police of the city of Norfolk, Nebraska, USA, with private Facebook correspondence between a 17-year-old girl and her mother, in which the two discussed the daughter's intention to have an abortion - An intention that eventually came true.
The private messages helped establish indictments against the two, who are expected to face criminal charges soon.
The girl, Celeste Burgess, is charged with the crimes of abandoning a body, concealing a death and making a false report to the authorities, while her mother, Jessica, is charged with two additional crimes - performing or attempting to perform an abortion against the law (Nebraska laws allow an abortion to be performed until the 20th week of the pregnancy, while Celeste was in the 23rd week of her pregnancy), and performing an abortion not by a qualified doctor.
Incriminating correspondence
The "Lincoln Journal Star" newspaper reported that the affair began after the police received information that Celeste had or performed an abortion, and was assisted by her mother to hide the fetus's body.
The investigators obtained medical reports that proved that Celeste was in the 23rd week of her pregnancy, and since she was acting in violation of the laws of the country - a criminal suspicion arose.
People use Facebook (illustration), photo: Reuters
The girl told in her investigation that she gave birth quietly in the shower, hurried to wake up her mother, and the two buried the body outside the city.
The investigators, who located the body, were not satisfied with this testimony, and turned to Facebook demanding to reveal the correspondence between her and her mother.
These correspondences, the contents of which were recently revealed after a gag order was lifted, confirm that Celeste planned to take "abortion pills" in order to terminate the unwanted pregnancy, while her mother instructed her on how to use them and even told her to "burn the evidence".
Based on this information, the police raided the family's home, confiscating six phones and seven computers in an effort to find more incriminating evidence.
It should be noted that Facebook handed over the intimate correspondence to the police on June 9, about two weeks before the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling, essentially canceling the federal constitutional right to abortion.
Now, each state in the US is allowed to set its own laws on the controversial issue.
A spokesman for Meta backed up the decision to transfer the incriminating correspondence to the police, and claimed that the search warrant given to the company did not state that it was an investigation into an abortion, "but into a silent birth in which the baby's body was burned and buried."
Still, this is one of the first times that a woman's private activity on Facebook helps incriminate her in an American state where abortion is illegal.
Also, the question arises as to how hacking into users' personal accounts is a correct and moral thing when it comes to abortions, and whether it is appropriate to devote so much time and technological resources to "catch" a girl who had an abortion.
Many would argue that not at all.
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