In the Trump administration’s latest effort to prevent undocumented teens from getting abortions, the Department of Justice urged a federal appeals court to overturn a judge’s order blocking officials from restricting abortion access for minors in immigrant detention, BuzzFeed reports.
According to BuzzFeed, Department of Justice attorney August Flentje told the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., that the order would force federal officials to act in ways “inconsistent with their profound respect for life.”
This is the latest in a series of court battles that began after an undocumented 17-year-old, known as Jane Doe, was detained in Texas shortly after crossing the border. She had obtained permission to receive an abortion, but the Trump administration intervened to block the procedure.
In March of 2018, in addition to barring the federal government from restricting the health-care access of teens being held in immigrant detention, a U.S. District Court judge also granted the American Civil Liberties Union’s request for a class action suit and prohibited government agencies from telling anyone about a teen’s decision to get an abortion without her permission, BuzzFeed reports—the injunction that is now in dispute.
Meanwhile, in June, the Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling, voiding Jane Doe’s case because she had already had the procedure.
“The district court has blocked the Trump administration’s cruel policy of obstructing unaccompanied immigrant minors’ access to abortion while the case continues, and we won’t stop until we strike it down once and for all,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement after the March ruling. Now, BuzzFeed reports that the three-judge panel—if it sides with the administration—could either overturn the injunction or narrow its scope.
