Facebook shares Teenager’s Private Chat with Cops, Delete Facebook trends on social media
Social media giant Facebook faced outrage by complying with US police probing an abortion case, boosting simmering fears the platform will be a tool for clamping down on the procedure.
The US resident Jessica Burgess, 41, has been accused of helping her teenage daughter terminate her 24-week pregnancy in the midwestern US state of Nebraska.
The incident came to the fore when Nebraska Police gained access to her Facebook messages using a warrant and found messages in which the two discussed medications for inducing an abortion and were planning to burn the fetus afterward.
Due to this report, the mother has been charged with five sections under the law and one of them includes offence under a 2010 law that only allows abortion up to 20 weeks after fertilization.
However, the daughter has been charged with three sections which also include concealing or abandoning a corpse.
Till June, states in the US weren’t allowed to enforce abortion bans until the point at which a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, which is at roughly 24 weeks.
Logan Koepke, a researcher has said in a tweet, “Sentence would seem to imply that *if* the search warrants mentioned abortion, there would be a different result. But of course, that’s not true”.
“Nothing in the valid warrants we received from local law enforcement in early June, prior to the Supreme Court decision, mentioned abortion. The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried, not a decision to have an abortion.”, Andy Stone, Facebook parent Meta’s spokesperson said in a tweet.
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