On Monday, immigrants’ rights advocates scored a major victory when U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from preventing two teens, Jane Roe and Jane Poe, from leaving immigration shelters to access abortions, reports Rewire.
The Trump administration has been hard at work behind the scenes ensuring that our deportation machine maintains control not only over the lives of those detained but also over women’s bodies.
In three cases, the administration has sought to block detained immigrant teens from accessing abortion services. In October, Jane Doe, an unaccompanied minor, received an abortion following a lengthy legal battle with the Trump administration.
In November, the Department of Justice filed a petition to the Supreme Court accusing her attorneys of misleading the government over the procedure’s timing to evade a review by the court.
These cases demonstrate that the government under Trump poses a dangerous threat to the agency of women and people of color across the spectrum.
Why should unaccompanied minors be forced to carry babies to term? How will our society’s most vulnerable care for children they were not planning to bring into the world? What stake does an administration full of rich, white men have in the outcomes of these cases other than a relentless quest for dominance?
If the war to keep three young women from making decisions over their reproductive health didn’t make that quest obvious enough, here’s some food for thought: in March, the Trump administration revised a policy that allows shelters:
“…To wield an unconstitutional veto power over unaccompanied immigrant minors’ access to abortion.”
As if an unaccompanied minor who has made the journey all the way to the United States to begin a new life is not capable of making decisions about her body and her future.
After the ruling, the Trump administration said that it would allow 17-year-old Jane Poe, who is 22 weeks pregnant, to have an abortion. They appealed the case of Jane Roe, asking the Supreme Court to grant a two-week stay of the ruling.
By Tuesday, however, government lawyers dropped their appeals. They reportedly discovered a copy of Jane Roe’s birth certificate and proved that she is 19 years old, not 17. They released Roe after transferring her from the Office of Refugee Resettlement to ICE.
The senior staff attorney for the ACLU called the Trump administration’s policy “dystopian” and vowed to fight for justice.
The Trump administration’s war on women is dystopian, indeed. These three girls will have access to the health services that they need. Under the administration’s guidance, others might not – all the more reason to get out and protest for immigrants’ rights and to fight back with your vote come 2018 and 2020.
Featured Image Via YouTube Video.
