Norfolk, Nebraska: On Tuesday, August 9, when Forbes reported that private communications on the network were used to prosecute a then-17-year-old girl for allegedly having an abortion, the hashtag “Delete Facebook” became popular.
According to the story, after authorities used a search order to retrieve a teenager’s Facebook chats, they charged her with breaking the law by allegedly aborting a pregnancy.
In Madison County District Court, 17-year-old Celeste Burgess and her mother Jessica Burgess are being tried as adults on suspicion of breaking a state statute that forbids abortions beyond 20 weeks. In a state where abortion is prohibited, this is one of the first instances in which a person’s Facebook behavior has been used to prosecute them.
After the Norfolk Police Department learned that Celeste miscarried in April at 23 weeks of pregnancy and secretly buried the fetus with the help of her mother, according to the Lincoln Journal Star, Celeste and her mother were charged in July with “allegedly removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body and concealing the death of another person.” Mom and daughter have both entered not guilty pleas to all allegations.
Following the publication of the story, Meta’s spokesperson, Andy Stone, posted a statement on Twitter in which he claimed that “abortion was not included in any of the legitimate search warrants we obtained from local law enforcement in early June, before the Supreme Court decision. According to court records, authorities at the time were looking into the case of a stillborn infant who was burned and buried, not the choice to have an abortion, and the warrants were to charges from a criminal investigation.
A user wrote, “And just when I thought Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook couldn’t go any lower, they gave the Nebraska Police a teen’s information and DMs just so they can prosecute her for getting an abortion! If they haven’t already, rational women should stop using Facebook!
Following staff pressure, Google declared that it will remove the location information of users who had used the platform to hunt up abortion services shortly after the hashtag #DeleteFacebook began to trend.