Tom Fenton
A U.S. mom has been sent to prison after facilitating an abortion for her daughter, who was over 20 weeks pregnant at the time.
Jessica Burgess, 42, has been sent to jail for two years after pleading guilty to tampering with human remains, false reporting and providing an abortion after at least 20 weeks of gestation.
Illegal in Nebraska, the judge at the trial said that she was aware that what she was doing would be breaking the state’s abortion laws, after going through ‘extraordinary means' to get the pill.
The judge stated: “I shudder to think, Ms. Burgess, that you have such disrespect for a — call it a human foetus, call it a stillborn child — that you would treat it like yesterday’s trash and not give it some respect in its treatment and disposal.
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“Our society expects more; it demands more.”
Her daughter, Celeste Burgess, who was well into her third trimester of pregnancy when she underwent the abortion, was sentenced in July to 90 days in jail and two years of probation.
Official investigators involved in the case, said that the mom had ordered the pills online for her daughter to use in the spring of 2022.
Police were given a warrant to look through a FaceBook conversation between the mother and daughter, where communications displayed that it was plotted to go through with the abortion and destroy any evidence of ever doing so.
In one message, the daughter joked: “I will finally be able to wear jeans.”
It has been proposed that the law-breaking mother could be considered for release after serving a year of her sentence.
People on X, formerly known as Twitter, were quick to comment on the case.
One said: “Sounds like the government mandating motherhood.”
Meanwhile another said: “She was thirty weeks pregnant.
“I am very pro choice…but let’s have some perspective here.”
A third added: “She helps her daughter get healthcare out of state and gets two years?”
Earlier this year, Republicans in the state failed to pass the six-week ban on abortions, but were successful in passing the 12-week ban after adding it as an amendment to a different bill, which limits gender-affirming care for young people who are transgender.
The sentencing in this case came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established American citizens a constitutional right to abortion for 50 years.