Judge sides with teens seeking abortions

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to allow two pregnant teenagers in U.S. im- migration custody to obtain abortions.

The requests from the 17-year-olds are the latest challenges to the government’s new policy of discouraging, and even blocking, illegal immigrant teens in custody from terminating pregnancies.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said in an order Monday that the administration can’t prevent the 17-yearold girls from exercising their right to an abortion.

The judge gave the administration 24 hours to try to persuade a higher court to block her order.

Both girls arrived in the country as unaccompanied minors and are being held in federal shelters, though it is not known precisely where.

Filings in advance of the hearing Monday are part of a broader case initially brought by a Central American girl who was able to terminate her pregnancy in October after a high-profile legal battle that is pending in the Supreme Court.

Chutkan, who ordered the government to allow the first teen to get an abortion, presided over the hearing to decide whether to issue a temporary restraining order against the government after the two new requests.

Since March, the Trump administration has refused to “facilitate” abortions for unaccompanied minors taken into federal custody after crossing the border illegally.

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, who are representing the two teens — one who is 10 weeks pregnant and the other, 22 weeks pregnant — say the new policy is an unconstitutional ban on abortion because it strips them of their right to make an independent decision about becoming a parent.

“We’ve already stopped the Trump administration from blocking one young woman’s abortion,” Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU said in a statement. “It’s unreal that the federal government is trying to force more young women to continue their pregnancies against their will.”

Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the government did not pay for abortions for teens in custody except in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s life. But officials did not block people in the country illegally in U.S. custody from having abortions at their own expense.

In court filings, the government says the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for detained unaccompanied minors, “has strong and constitutionally legitimate interests in promoting its interest in life, in refusing to facilitate abortion, and in not providing incentives for pregnant minors to illegally cross the border to obtain elective abortions while in federal custody.”

The two sides in the cases dispute the number of teens affected by the policy.

There were 420 pregnant girls in custody during fiscal 2017, court filings show, and 18 who requested abortions.

Government lawyers had argued that the first teenager, known only as Jane Doe in court filings, could no longer serve as the face of the broader challenge on behalf of other pregnant teens because the girl had already terminated her pregnancy.

After the girl got an abortion Oct. 25, the administration also asked the Supreme Court to dismiss all other claims and to wipe out the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that had allowed the procedure in October.

The administration also took the unusual step of asking the Supreme Court to consider disciplinary action against the girl’s lawyers for what it says were misleading statements that meant the government missed the time window for trying to get a court order to stop the abortion.

The girl’s legal team has called the assertions about misleading statements “baseless” and said attorneys acted in the teen’s best interests and fully complied with the law.

In the new court filings, ACLU attorneys say the two additional pregnant teens also have been prevented from accessing abortion services. One teen, identified as Jane Roe, is about 10 weeks pregnant and, after being counseled about her options, asked for an abortion.

The other, identified as Jane Poe, requested an abortion earlier this month after being told by her doctor that she is approaching the point in her pregnancy — now 22 weeks — after which she will no longer be able to obtain an abortion.

Without a temporary restraining order from the court, their attorneys say, the teens “will both be pushed further into their pregnancies, increasing the risks associated with the abortion procedure, and, if the court does not intervene, Ms. Roe and Ms. Poe will be forced to carry to term against their will.”

In response, government lawyers said the circumstances for the two teens are distinct from the October case.

The teen known as Jane Roe is in the final stages of obtaining a sponsor in the U.S., according to the government, and presumably, the sponsor could take her to obtain an abortion after she is released from custody.

The second teen decided as recently as Dec. 4 that she did not want an abortion, and only last week changed her mind to proceed, according to the government.

Information for this article was contributed by Ann E. Marimow of The Washington Post; and by staff members of The Associated Press.