Related Articles
A Nebraska teen who enlisted her mother’s help to obtain abortion pills in violation of state law has been sentenced to 90 days in jail. Celeste Burgess was 17 years old and 24 weeks pregnant when she took Mifepristone and Misoprostol that her mother purchased online.
In May, the now 19-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of improper disposal of human skeletal remains. Two other charges initially filed against her —false reporting and concealing the death of another person — were dropped as part of an agreement with prosecutors.
Police in Norfolk, Nebraska went to great lengths to build a case against the teen and her mother, seeking both her medical records — to determine how far along her pregnancy was —and private Facebook messages exchanged between the two.
Nebraska currently bans abortion at 12 weeks gestation; at the time, in April 2022, Nebraska law prohibited abortions after 20 weeks. Telemedicine abortions are also prohibited by Nebraska law. (The FDA has approved Mifepristone and Misoprostol to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks.)
According to messages that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, turned over to police in Nebraska, the teenager spoke about being anxious to end the pregnancy and worried about “evidence” of her illegal abortion being discovered. Burgess admitted to police that she miscarried after taking the pills and, with the help of her mother and a third person, burned and buried the remains.
At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, Burgess told the judge that her family would not have been able to afford a proper cremation or burial, “financial-wise.”
“I wanted to do the right thing, but I didn’t know if what I was doing at the time was the right thing,” the 19-year-old said. “I do regret my decisions very much.”
In addition to 90 days in jail — she had faced up to two years — Celeste Burgess was sentenced to two years probation.
Jessica Burgess has pleaded guilty to three charges: Providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, false reporting and tampering with human skeletal remains. It is the first time that anyone has been charged with illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks in Nebraska, the county prosecutor said. She is scheduled to be sentenced in September.
