1y ago

Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges

www.theverge.com Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges

Unencrypted chat history is a prime target for police

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

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589 comments

Jesus Christ, America.
- I can't remember the last time I saw anything that made me think "I would like to go to America".
  These days it's just another thing to add to the ever increasing list of reasons NOT to go there.
  
  I live in a third world country with a crumbling infrastructure, shitloads of violence and crime, a rapidly rising cost of living, crap working opportunities and corrupt government.
  Americans live in a first world country where it seems more and more like most of the problems I mentioned are somehow worse there and the ones they haven’t got yet are on the horizon.
  I used to think it would be my future home. Now I’m looking for literally anything other than the US/China.
- Not sure how this is in any way an America specific thing.
  The abortion was at 28 weeks, fetuses are viable outside the womb at 24 weeks, and Nebraska allows abortions until 20 weeks. They waited two whole months past the point they could have taken care of this with no fuss, one month past the point of viability.
  They didn't do this through a doctor or any safe/proper way. The pregnant woman took medicine to kill the fetus, then delivered it as a stillbirth. Her and her mother then burned the stillborn and buried it on a farm.
  The mother and daughter told police they discussed it in their facebook dms, police made a formal legal request for the dms to facebook and facebook complied. They didn't follow the golden rule of "don't talk to police". On top of that, the court documents indicate that the dms were part of a bunch of evidence that made the case, not the single piece of evidence that convicted them.
  Honestly asking, is there something I'm missing here that would have made this turn out differently in another country? America isn't as great as its own patriotism claims, but I see this take very often in situations that don't seem to have much at all to do with it happening in America.
  
  I read the article at a glance, to be fair. Iirc the pair live in one of the many states where abortion itself is now criminalised, so there was no way to deal with this “without a fuss”.
  
  The godawful changes with Roe v Wade happened after this incident, and you can't be charged with breaking a law by actions taken before the law was in effect/changed. So at the time, they still could have done the abortion legally.
  
  Huh, weird fuckin situation then.
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  ^this slaps

589 comments