MADISON, Neb. – A northeast Nebraska woman accused of performing and concealing an illegal abortion for her daughter has reached a plea deal in Madison County District Court.

On Friday, Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty to two felonies and a misdemeanor. Two additional charges, one felony and one misdemeanor, were dropped as part of the agreement.

According to the Madison County District Court office, Burgess pleaded guilty to removing, concealing or abandoning a dead body, performing an abortion after 20 weeks, and false reporting.

Charges of performing an abortion by a non-licensed doctor and concealing the death of another person were dismissed.

According to court records, Jessica Burgess and her now 18-year-old daughter, Celeste Burgess, reportedly discussed terminating Celeste's pregnancy via Facebook messages, which were later acquired by law enforcement.

Madison County Attorney Joe Smith said it’s the first time he has charged anyone for illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks, a restriction that was passed in 2010. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, states weren’t allowed to enforce abortion bans until the point at which a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks.

Nebraska has since passed a 12-week abortion ban in the Legislature.

In one of the Facebook messages, now-42-year-old Jessica Burgess, tells her then 17-year-old daughter that she has obtained abortion pills for her and gives her instructions on how to take them to end the pregnancy.

The daughter, meanwhile, “talks about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body,” a detective wrote in court documents. “I will finally be able to wear jeans,” she says in one of the messages. Law enforcement authorities obtained the messages with a search warrant, and detailed some of them in court documents.

In early June of 2022, the mother and daughter were only charged with a single felony for removing, concealing or abandoning a body, and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting. It wasn’t until about a month later, after investigators reviewed the private Facebook messages, that they added the felony abortion-related charges against the mother. The daughter was charged as an adult at the prosecutor's request.

When first interviewed, the two told investigators that the teen had unexpectedly given birth to a stillborn baby in the shower in the early morning hours of April 22, 2022. They said they put the fetus in a bag, placed it in a box in the back of their van, and later drove several miles north of town, where they buried the body with the help of a 22-year-old man.

The man, who was 21 at the time, pleaded no contest to helping bury the fetus on rural land his parents own north of Norfolk. He was sentenced to probation.

In court documents, the detective said the fetus showed signs of “thermal wounds” and that the man told investigators the mother and daughter did burn it. He also wrote that the daughter confirmed in the Facebook exchange with her mother that the two would “burn the evidence afterward.” Based on medical records, the fetus was more than 23 weeks old, the detective wrote.

Burgess later admitted to investigators to buying the abortion pills “for the purpose of instigating a miscarriage.”

At first, both mother and daughter said they didn’t remember the date when the stillbirth happened, but according to the detective, the daughter later confirmed the date by consulting her Facebook messages. After that he sought the warrant, he said.

Jessica Burgess will be sentenced September 22.

Celeste Burgess pleaded guilty in May. She will be sentenced July 20.