MADISON, Nebraska (LifeSiteNews) — A Nebraska woman who pleaded guilty to assisting her daughter in aborting her baby at 29 weeks of pregnancy and later burning and burying her grandchild has been sentenced to two years in prison.
District Judge Mark Johnson sentenced Jessica Burgess to two years in prison for “prohibited acts with human skeletal remains, abortion at 20 weeks past gestation and false reporting,” according to the Norfolk Daily News. However, she can be out after just a year if she exhibits good behavior.
The judge said Burgess treated the remains of her own grandchild “like yesterday’s trash.” Burgess bought her daughter abortion drugs to kill her own baby.
Her daughter, Celeste Burgess, is already out of jail after spending just 90 days imprisoned. She also is on probation for two years.
The baby was 29 weeks old and the pair “burned the remains and buried them in a field north of Norfolk in northeastern Nebraska,” in April 2022, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.
The mother-daughter pair tried multiple times to conceal their crime.
“The mother and daughter buried the remains three different times and also attempted to burn the remains after the second exhumation,” the Norfolk Daily News reported.
“Madison County Attorney Joe Smith has said that the Burgesses purchased apple-flavored barbecue briquettes so that the odor of the burning remains would not be as unpleasant,” the local news outlet reported.
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The story first gained attention because the media treated it as a story about how Big Tech might be used to help law enforcement prosecute abortions. The pair discussed the illegal abortion via social media messages.
“This is the data Facebook gave police to prosecute a teenager for abortion,” a headline by Vice read last year, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.
A headline in USA Today said that police “seize[d] family Facebook messages.”