A Nebraska woman who helped her daughter obtain abortion pills and subsequently burn and bury the baby’s body was sentenced to two years in prison.
The woman, Jessica Burgess, 42, of Norfolk, Nebraska was charged after police found her private messages on Facebook, which showed that she had plans with her teenage daughter, Celeste, to end her pregnancy and “burn the evidence,” according to The New York Times.
Reportedly, Burgess ordered medication abortion pills online and gave them to her daughter while she was in the third trimester of pregnancy in April 2022. Celeste Burgess was 17 years old at the time.
Jessica and Celeste Burgess reportedly burned and buried the body, the Associated Press reported. In July, Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty to tampering with human remains, false reporting and providing an abortion after at least 20 weeks of gestation, which is illegal in Nebraska.
On Friday, Madison County District Judge Mark Johnson sentenced Jessice Burgess to one year in prison for each count, with the first two to run concurrently. The sentence for the illegal abortion was ordered to run after the first two counts, totaling a two-year sentence.
“I shudder to think, Ms. Burgess, that you have such disrespect for a — call it a human fetus, 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,” the judge reportedly said. “Our society expects more; it demands more.”
Nebraska mom gets two years in prison for giving daughter abortion pills https://t.co/cfaCsiv5hM pic.twitter.com/oIdcGfP6tu
— New York Post (@nypost) September 23, 2023
As part of Burgess’ plea, charges of concealing the death of another person and abortion by someone other than a licensed physician were dismissed.
Celeste Burgess, now 19, was sentenced in July to 90 days in jail and two years of probation for burning and burying her unborn child.
This is Celeste Burgess.
— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) July 21, 2023
She was 29 weeks pregnant but told her mother she “can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body" because she wanted to fit into a pair of jeans.
So Celeste killed her baby and then burned the baby's body like trash and buried the child to hide the… pic.twitter.com/7u2qDbinvu
According to Fox News, police became aware of the situation following a tip. After searching the Facebook messages, police then found burned fetal remains in a field north of Norfolk (via Fox News):
In one of the Facebook messages, Jessica Burgess instructed her daughter on how to take the pills to end the pregnancy, according to court records. In another, Celeste Burgess wrote, "I will finally be able to wear jeans."