On Friday, a judge in Nebraska handed down a two-year sentence to a woman who admitted to providing her teenage daughter abortion drugs and then assisting to burn and hide the fetus.
Jessica Burgess, 42, admitted in July to unlawful abortion procedures and other charges, including tampering with human remains and false reporting. On Friday, District Judge Mark Johnson of Madison County gave her a year in jail for each offense, with the first two serving consecutively. After serving the first two years, the two-year sentence on the abortion count will begin to run concurrently.
According to her online court records, the judge did not grant her probation.
Norfolk, Nebraska’s Burgess revealed at her plea hearing that she had assisted her daughter, then 17 years old, in terminating the pregnancy. The accusations of concealing another person’s death and performing an abortion without a medical professional were dropped as part of her plea agreement.
Celeste Burgess, now 19, received a sentence of 90 days in jail and two years of probation in July for the murder of her unborn child, which she had burned and buried.
The abortion was illegal under Nebraska law at the time since it occurred after 20 weeks of pregnancy, when the adolescent was already far into her third trimester. Officials claim that in the spring of 2022, Jessica Burgess gave her daughter a bottle of abortion pills she had purchased online.
A tip led police in Norfolk to investigate the abortion, as stated in an arrest document. Prosecutors claim the ladies discussed terminating the pregnancy and erasing the evidence in Facebook communications obtained by police. A field north of Norfolk is where police discovered the burned bones of a fetus.
In one of the Facebook chats, Jessica Burgess allegedly told her daughter how to take the medications to terminate the pregnancy. Celeste Burgess said in another, “I will finally be able to wear jeans.”
A number of Nebraska legislators who opposed Republican efforts to significantly restrict abortion access during the session that concluded in June regularly highlighted the Norfolk case as evidence that state prosecutors would target women who sought abortions for criminal prosecution.
The ostensibly bipartisan Nebraska Legislature vetoed a six-week abortion ban this year, but added a 12-week ban to a law restricting gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents. The ACLU is challenging the abortion ban and transgender care law in court, arguing that they violate the state constitution’s mandate that measures from the Nebraska legislature address only one topic at a time.
The Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, which for 50 years established a constitutional right to abortion, prompted both the legislative action and the sentencings in the Norfolk case.
