JAKARTA - A woman in Nebraska pleaded guilty to helping her daughter have a drug abortion last year. The legal process against her relies on Facebook's decision to give authorities accessing private messages between the mother and daughter discussing the daughter's plans to end her pregnancy.
This case is an example that illustrates how Big Tech can be used to assist abortion prosecution in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade's ruling, a 1973 decision legalizing abortion.
Experts have warned that location data, search history, emails, text messages, and even period tracking apps and ovulations can now be used in prosecuting people looking for abortion and those who help them, and the case shows their legitimate concerns.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, could challenge legal orders to grant access to private messages to the police, as other tech companies do for different reasons, but they don't.
Private messages on Facebook Messenger show how the two discussed plans to end pregnancy and destroy evidence, including instructions from mothers about using pills to end pregnancy. The messages directly bring law enforcement to get a search warrant.
The police raided the family's house and confiscated six smartphones and seven laptops, with data such as internet history and emails totaling 24 gigabytes.
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Meta did not give TechCrunch a timely response, but last year, the company issued a statement which reads:
"It was not in a valid warrant that we received from local authorities in early June, prior to the Supreme Court's decision, which stated abortion. The warrant relates to allegations related to criminal investigations and court documents showing that police were investigating the case of a burning and buried baby, not a decision to have an abortion."
TechCrunch has repeatedly asked for more information about what the police have specifically shared with Meta, and what their suspicions. Police initially began investigating "worries that a teenage girl... had given birth prematurely to the alleged baby's death."
As TechCrunch wrote in 2022: "A 17-year-old girl and a hasty hidden baby looks like something worth an inspection closer than granting permission to all the child's data." Especially given the debate in the United States at the time regarding the Supreme Court's decision to cancel Roe v. Wade.
Meta is reluctant to take a stand on the issue of abortion, but as Irish philosopher
The passive attitude of Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, reminded him of his refusal to make Facebook a "arbiter of truth" ahead of the 2020 presidential election. At that time, Zuckerberg acknowledged the importance of not censoring political speeches, even as the speech approached misinformation that could affect the democratic process.
In her guilty plea agreement, the mother, Jessica totaled guilty of giving her daughter an illegal abortion pill after a pregnancy of up to 20 weeks, which at that time was declared illegal. In May, the Republican Governor of Nebraska, Jim Pillen, signed a law banning abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, which took effect immediately.
They also pleaded guilty to false reporting and disturbing the dead human bone. According to court documents, the mother helped her daughter burn and bury the aborted fetus, which was later discovered by authorities from a field north of Norfolk. The court rejected accusations of hiding someone else's death and abortion by someone other than a licensed doctor.
Madison's attorney, Joe Smith, said that this case was the first time she had sued someone for an illegal abortion after 20 weeks.
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