A Nebraska mother and her daughter face up to two years of prison time after the then-17-year-old took abortion pills in her third trimester and buried the fetal remains, The New York Times reported Aug. 18.
In Nebraska, medication abortion — an FDA-approved, two-pill regimen that's intended to end a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks — must be dispensed by a licensed physician and can't be prescribed through telehealth, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a left-leaning research group.
The mother faces two felonies related to the state's abortion law, including performing an abortion without a medical license, and performing or attempting to abort a fetus more than 20 weeks after conception, according to the Times. Both women face charges of mishandling human remains, concealing a death and false reporting.
The abortion was discovered after police obtained a warrant for the two's private Facebook messages, where they planned the procedure.
According to police records, the abortion happened two months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but the state already had a law banning most abortions after 20 weeks, according to the Times.
Read the full report here.