“Good or bad is not the end, you have to endure right or wrong first…” Vasco Rossi sings, suggesting how exhausting it can be to take sides in extremely difficult situations when the right to self-determination of the pregnant woman and the right of the investigating authorities to use all means at their disposal in the face of alleged crimes come into play.. A case that is causing a lot of discussion during these hours concerns the ability of companies like Facebook to intervene in a police investigation if the company has direct information about a particular user, as happened with 17-year-old girl who allegedly had an abortion at 28 weeks pregnant with the help of her motherthat is, with a fetus already formed by 7 months.
It happened in Nebraska, where a mother allegedly performed a pharmacological abortion on her teenage daughter after the twentieth week, the state’s maximum. The first crime brought against the two women in June was the burial of a stillborn child.. Once the fetus was found, the investigation would expand to the causes of death, and by ruling out asphyxiation, the police would find an illegal abortion, as confirmed by some personal messages taken from the chat of Celeste Burgess – this is the name of a young woman – and delivered by Meta to investigators.
Own the content of these messages is now likely to be decisive evidence of the guilt of a girl who, along with her mother and 22-year-old boy, an accomplice, now faces prison. Celeste, on her mother’s advice, would take Pregnot, which, like RU486, contains mifepristone and causes fetal death. Later she will give birth to the calf stillborn and then bury it. A practice that is certainly impressive, especially for such a late state of pregnancy – let’s not forget the cases of babies born in a week, namely the age of the fetus at the time of the abortion – but which does not justify a girl’s abuse of personal data in chats owned by Meta.
It is true that the investigation is ongoing, and it is right that the law is enforced when violations are found, but at the very least, the sheer amount of data that high-tech companies collect every day on millions of users needs to be questioned. registered, their use and the legality of their transfer to the security forces. Except in cases of public danger which may make cooperation between investigators and companies necessary or desirable, who decides whether, when and to what extent our data can be transferred to third parties?
In Celeste’s case, the overturning of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which established the right to abortion 49 years ago, has nothing to do with it. The Nebraska state law has not been amended: the maximum term for termination of pregnancy was 20 weeks and remains so to this day. However, the correlation is clear in other states where votes have been taken in recent weeks to punish abortion in any way, including rape and incest. If even in these cases one can no longer count on the help of the messaging system for fear of being discovered, who will the girls of today and tomorrow turn to? When all hope seems lost, silence can lead to despair. So who will take responsibility for overlooking the priority well-being of “living life in progress” in an attempt to save “life in potential” at all costs? More lives are not saved by the criminalization of abortion.
Source: Elle