The woman who illegally obtained abortion pills for her teenage daughter, later helping her to burn and bury the child’s body, has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Last year, Jessica and Celeste Burgess were arrested after police learned about their abortion scheme. In April — before Roe v. Wade had been overturned — 41-year-old Jessica obtained the abortion pills for Celeste, who was 18 at the time.
Though Celeste was originally thought to be 23 weeks pregnant, prosecutors have since explained that she was 29 weeks pregnant at the time of the abortion. In Nebraska, where the two live, preborn children are protected by law from abortion after 20 weeks.
In Facebook messages between the mother and daughter, Celeste wrote that she couldn’t wait to get “this thing” out of me, that she was excited to be able to wear jeans again, and that the two should burn the “evidence” — meaning the baby.
After the abortion, the body of the baby was placed into a plastic bag and then thrown into the back of their car. With the help of 22-year-old Tanner Barnhill, the body was repeatedly buried, dug up, and reburied. Police said the body was burned sometime after the second reburial. According to the autopsy, the baby’s body had “thermal wounds” on it, and while it was possible the baby was stillborn, the medical examiner said “the placement of the fetus into a plastic bag raises the possibility of asphyxia due to suffocation,” meaning the baby could have been born alive.
Celeste pled guilty to concealing or abandoning a dead body, and was sentenced to 90 days in prison. She served just 53 days of her term, and has been released. Jessica likewise pled guilty, to charges of “providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, false reporting, and tampering with human skeletal remains.”
“This was something that should have been handled differently,” Joseph Smith, the Madison County attorney, said, according to KETV. “Everybody participated in things and saw things they shouldn’t have ever done and never have seen.”
Judge Mark Johnson further criticized Jessica for her callous attitude towards the baby. “Call it a human fetus, call it a stillborn child,” he said. “That you would treat it like yesterday’s trash.”
