Undocumented teenager seeks court authorization to access abortion services

A pregnant 17-year-old undocumented immigrant is at the center of a legal dispute over whether unaccompanied immigrant minors have the right to an abortion in the United States.

After being caught by immigration authorities, Jane Doe, as she’s referred to in court filings, is currently at a shelter in Brownsville in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a federal agency responsible for refugees and unaccompanied undocumented minors. Doe is seeking an emergency court order authorizing her to access abortion services after the federal office blocked her from attending a pre-abortion medical appointment, according to Susan Hays, legal director of Jane’s Due Process, a nonprofit that provides legal representation for pregnant minors in Texas.

Hays, who’s working on the case, said her organization has already helped Doe get the court authorization required for the procedure. Under Texas law, minors need their parents’ permission or a court order to get an abortion.

“On Sept. 28, she was scheduled to go get her options counseling and state law mandated sonogram by the same physician that will perform the abortion,” Hays said. The young woman was scheduled for an abortion the next day.

But ORR refused to let Doe leave the shelter to go to the clinic, even accompanied by her guardian and attorney ad litem — the people who are appointed by a judge to be responsible for minors in her situation.

According to Hays, instead of going to the abortion clinic, Jane Doe was forced to go to a Crisis Pregnancy Center, where minors get counseling directed to dissuade them from having abortions.

“The shelter is under orders from the Office of Refugee Resettlement not to allow Jane Doe to access abortion,” said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, adding that the agency refused to transport the minor themselves. “They are effectively holding her hostage.”

On Oct. 5, the ACLU added Doe to a June 2016 case against the federal government – then run by the Obama administration – for allegedly allowing some religiously affiliated shelters to impose their religion on minors by prohibiting their access to abortion.

In a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the ACLU is trying to “add Jane Doe to the case and [get] her emergency relief to ensure that she can access first the counseling tomorrow and the abortion on Friday,” Amiri said.

Even though the original suit was filed against the Obama administration, the ACLU argues that the Trump administration is now adopting a policy that directly prevents unaccompanied immigrant minors from obtaining abortions. “This is the federal agency with Trump appointees making this decisions,” Amiri said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed an amicus brief in the case, which is set to be heard Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco. In a Tuesday news release, Paxton’s office said he filed the brief to defend “the federal government’s right to deny access to abortion services to an unlawfully-present minor alien in Texas.”

“If ‘Doe’ prevails in this case, the ruling will create a right to abortion for anyone on earth who enters the U.S. illegally. And with that right, countless others undoubtedly would follow,” Paxton said in the release, adding that “Texas must not become a sanctuary state for abortions.”