A Nebraska woman received a two-year prison sentence on Friday for facilitating abortion pills that her teenage daughter, Celeste Burgess, used to terminate her pregnancy last year.
The mother, Jessica Burgess, faced charges after the police discovered private Facebook messages in which she and her daughter discussed ending the pregnancy and disposing of the evidence.
Prosecutors revealed that the 42-year-old mother had ordered the pills online and administered them to her daughter in April 2022, when Celeste was 17 and in her third trimester of pregnancy. Subsequently, the Burgesses burned and buried the fetal remains.
In July, Ms. Burgess pleaded guilty to violating Nebraska’s abortion law, furnishing false information to a law enforcement officer, and removing or concealing human skeletal remains. Celeste Burgess had already been sentenced in July to 90 days in jail and two years of probation after pleading guilty in May to removing or concealing human skeletal remains.
Jessica Burgess, who could have faced up to five years in prison, with her terms for false reporting and removal of skeletal remains running concurrently, received a two-year sentence.
During the sentencing, Brad Ewalt, Ms Burgess’s lawyer, requested probation, but Judge Mark A. Johnson of Madison County District Court denied the request, stating that Ms Burgess had treated the fetal remains “like yesterday’s trash,” as reported by The Norfolk Daily News.
The investigation into the Burgesses began in late April 2022 when the police in Norfolk, Neb., began probing whether a 17-year-old girl had prematurely given birth to a stillborn baby and she and her mother had buried it.
At the time, Nebraska banned abortion after 20 weeks from conception. In May, Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, signed a 12-week ban into law.
The initial charges against the Burgesses were for concealing a stillbirth. However, court documents revealed that a detective later asked Celeste Burgess for the precise date her pregnancy ended. When she mentioned needing to check her Facebook messages to remember, the detective obtained a warrant for messages exchanged with her mother.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, complied with the warrant, and the detective discovered evidence of a medically induced abortion, leading to additional charges, as outlined in court documents.