Facebook aided the police in convicting a mother and daughter on abortion charges by providing their private chat history. The details emerged from court documents published by Motherboard and have placed the Meta-owned social media platform in the cross-hairs of abortion campaigners.
Following the illegalisation of abortion in America, after the famous Roe verdict was overturned, social media companies have tried to be careful not to run afoul of the government while trying to keep their users.
In this curious case, Facebook claimed that the request it received for the private chats was legal and did not mention abortion.
“The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried, not a decision to have an abortion,” Meta’s communications director Andy Stone said. “Both of these warrants were originally accompanied by non-disclosure orders, which prevented us from sharing any information about them. The orders have now been lifted.”
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The mother-daughter pair had been subjects of an investigation about illegally burying a stillborn child. However, after they revealed that they talked about it on Facebook Messenger, the police obtained the chat from the company. Then, it turned out that the pair also talked about the daughter using a home abortion medicine.
Now, they face charges for both performing an abortion 20 weeks after fertilization and performing an abortion without a licensed doctor. It also adds to the charges related to removing, concealing, or abandoning a corpse.
The matter has led to several reactions, with the hashtag #DeleteFacebook trending on Twitter. It also raised the issue that the company does have access to private chats as it does not offer end-to-end encryption like WhatsApp.
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