Nebraska woman charged with aiding abortion

Prosecutors charged Jessica Burgess, 41, with helping her 17-year-old daughter, Celeste Burgess, get an abortion at 24 weeks of gestation. Nebraska law protects babies after 20 weeks. Prosecutors charged the daughter with a felony for removing, concealing, or abandoning a body, and two misdemeanors. She is now 18 and is being charged as an adult. The charges were filed in June and July but just came to light in local news reports. A 22-year-old man was also charged with a misdemeanor. He pleaded no contest to helping bury the body.

How did investigators figure it out? At first, the pair told investigators that the daughter had unexpectedly given birth in the shower in April. So they put the baby in a bag and box and drove it a few miles north to bury it with the help of the 22-year-old man. But the daughter could not remember the date she gave birth, so she consulted Facebook messages with her mother. After that, the investigators got a warrant for the messages where the two discussed getting the pills as well as burning the evidence. Investigators also said there were “thermal wounds” on the baby. Burgess later confessed to buying abortion pills for her daughter.

Dig deeper: Read Ericka Andersen’s column in WORLD Opinions on the threat of the abortion pill.