Immigrant teen obtains abortion after court victory

HOUSTON — A pregnant teenager in the country illegally and in federal custody whose attempt to have an abortion set off a monthlong legal battle with the Trump administration terminated her pregnancy Wednesday morning. She underwent the procedure a day after a court ruling forced federal officials to allow it.

The teenager, who is 17 and is identified in court documents as Jane Doe, illegally crossed the border in Texas in early September and was apprehended. Her pregnancy was discovered during a physical exam, and since then she had been fighting in court to have an abortion.

Jane Doe was transported from the federally funded shelter in Brownsville, Texas, where she has been living to an abortion provider, which was not identified. She returned to the shelter after the procedure and remains in federal custody.

She had received a state court order Sept. 25 allowing her to have an abortion without her parents’ consent. But the decision that cleared the way came one month later, on Tuesday, when a federal appeals court in Washington sided with Jane Doe, sending the case back to a lower court, which immediately ordered the Trump administration to allow her to obtain an abortion “promptly and without delay.”

The Justice Department did not immediately comment on her abortion. But Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who had led a group of Republican attorneys general in a brief supporting the government’s position, said in a statement, “Today’s loss of innocent human life is tragic.”

Jane Doe’s lawyers have accused officials in the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement of trying to block, delay and insert itself into the abortion decisions of other pregnant unauthorized teenagers in their custody.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court to try to stop the Trump administration from interfering with unaccompanied minors’ access to abortion. Jane Doe is the lead plaintiff in that ongoing case.

“With this case we have seen the astounding lengths this administration will go to block women from abortion care,” said Brigitte Amiri, the lead lawyer in the Jane Doe case for the ACLU.