Opinion: Think women ought to have abortion rights? Don’t talk about it on Facebook

Tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Lyft and Facebook all rushed in after Roe was overturned to promise they would pay the cost of any employee seeking an abortion, yet stayed curiously silent about how they would respond to requests for data. — Dreamstime/TNS

The case of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, turning over private message data to Nebraska investigators, who then used it to prosecute a teenage girl who induced an abortion, is the latest proof that our sense of privacy is an illusion.

Celeste Burgess and her mother, Jessica Burgess, have been charged with one felony count of prohibited acts with human skeletal remains, one misdemeanour count of concealing the death of another person and one misdemeanour count of false information. Jessica Burgess has also been charged with felony counts of inducing an illegal abortion and performing an abortion as someone other than a licensed physician.