Authorities obtained incriminatory messages between the mother and the daughter after they approached Facebook with a search warrant LONDON: Facebook is under intense scrutiny after handing in private messages of a 17-year-old girl accused of crimes relating to an abortion to Nebraska police. The teenager is accused, along with her mother, of having broken the law that prohibits abortion after 20 weeks. According to court files, the teenager miscarried at 23 weeks of pregnancy and secretly buried the fetus with her mother’s help. The two were charged in July with allegedly removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body, concealing the death of another person and false reporting. Authorities obtained incriminatory messages between the mother and daughter after they approached Facebook with a search warrant. Facebook reportedly had the option of challenging the court’s decision but chose to provide police access to the teen’s direct messages instead. The teenager is currently facing three criminal charges as a result of using an abortion pill purchased online and burying the unborn fetus. “Nothing in the valid warrants we received from local law enforcement in early June, prior to the Supreme Court decision, mentioned abortion. The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried, not a decision to have an abortion,” Meta Spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. This case represents one of the first instances in which a person’s social media activity has been used against them in a state where access to abortion is restricted, and it is perceived as a stab in the back after tech companies vowed to protect users in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The news comes just a few weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to “expand encryption across the platform in an effort to keep people safe.” Meta also said it would offer financial assistance to employees having to travel to a different state to seek an abortion.