Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court building as arguments on Nebraska's partial birth abortion law are heard before the court. (Harry Hamburg/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) OMAHA, Neb. - A Nebraska woman has been charged with helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy at about 24 weeks after investigators uncovered Facebook messages in which the two discussed using medication to induce an abortion and plans to burn the fetus afterward.The prosecutor handling the case said it's the first time he has charged anyone for illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks, a restriction that was passed in 2010.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, states weren’t allowed to enforce abortion bans until the point at which a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks.In one of the Facebook messages, Jessica Burgess, 41, tells her then 17-year-old daughter that she has obtained abortion pills for her and gives her instructions on how to take them to end the pregnancy.RELATED: State by state: Abortion laws across the U.S.The daughter, meanwhile, "talks about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body," a detective wrote in court documents. "I will finally be able to wear jeans," she says in one of the messages.
Law enforcement authorities obtained the messages with a search warrant, and detailed some of them in court documents.In early June, the mother and daughter were only charged with a single felony for removing, concealing or abandoning a body, and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting.