The #DeleteFacebook (“Delete Facebook”) movement is resuming in the United States. The social network is accused of having transmitted to the police the private conversations of two users under investigation for an illegal abortion, causing strong reactions on social networks. The affair was revealed on Monday August 8 by Forbes and other American media.
Celeste Burgess, a 17-year-old American, and her mother Jessica are facing lawsuits after the teenager’s abortion in Nebraska, where abortion is prohibited from twenty weeks after fertilization. According to American justice, the teenager ingested an abortion pill beyond the legal deadline, and then buried the fetus with the help of her mother.
The young woman is prosecuted for “concealment or abandonment of a human body”, “concealment of the death of another person” and “false declaration”, her mother for “practice of an abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy”, “performance of an abortion by an unlicensed doctor”, and “concealment of a human body”.
The charges against the two women are based in particular on private messages exchanged on Facebook, which the social network has agreed to transmit to the authorities. The police used the data transmitted by Facebook to search the phones and computers of the two Americans, as shown by documents revealed by Vice (in English). On social networks, Internet users say they have deleted Facebook and call on other users to delete their accounts to protect their personal data.
I deleted facebook this morning (after not looking since 2016). In the little box where they ask why I said “You shared a user’s private information and now she’s being criminally charged for abortion. With all due respect, f-ck you.” It was so satisfying. #DeleteFacebook https://t.co/4Y2jGbGHz5
— Amy P (@sittinonthebaby) August 10, 2022
A first wave of the #DeleteFacebook hashtag had already emerged after the Supreme Court’s decision to let each state regulate and restrict access to abortion. Women had organized themselves on social networks to send abortion pills by mail to states where abortion is prohibited or very restricted. Facebook said at the time that it would ban users from its platform who post messages aimed at circumventing the law..
However, the Meta subsidiary had maintained doubts about a possible transmission to the authorities of the private conversations of its users under investigation for abortion. Facebook’s collaboration with the police department that opened an investigation against Celeste and Jessica Burgess has pro-choice activists concerned that the practice is becoming widespread. On his side, Facebook defended itself by saying it had no knowledge that the investigation concerned an abortion.
Two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, who protected the right to abortion in the United States, abortion is totally prohibited in 10 states and restricted to a period of 6 weeks of pregnancy in four others.