How the end of Roe v Wade makes it harder for young migrants in US custody to get abortions

Immigration advocates are concerned the wave of new abortion restrictions after the demise of Roe v Wade will limit access to reproductive care for vulnerable, unaccompanied migrant children in US immigration custody.

As it stands, children under 18 who cross the border and are held in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) can request abortion care, but often are detained in states like Texas and Arizona with extreme abortion restrictions. As a result, the youth must go through the process of being transferred to another state to access the procedures.

"It’s yet another layer of how tenuous abortion access is for a very vulnerable population," Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, told BuzzFeedNews. "I have no doubt that if an anti-abortion president is elected in 2024 that he will remove the protections for access to abortion that currently exist for minors in ORR custody."

In October, ORR released a guidance urging agency staff to try “to the greatest extent possible” to place pregnant migrant youth in facilities outside of Texas. The state, with its 1,254 miles of US-Mexico border, is home to a majority of unaccompanied minors in the US in ORR detention.

Immigration activists are urging ORR and its parent agency, the US Department of Health and Human Services, to adopt a nationwide policy around abortion access for pregnant, unaccompanied minors, following the Supreme Court’s June decision to end the constitutional right to abortion care.

The Independent has contacted HSS for comment.

Though data remains patchy about just how common abortions are in ORR detention, evidence suggests abortion care is a need for numerous young migrants, who are sometimes fleeing or encountering abuse on their journey to the US.

Between 30 March 2018 and mid-2019, for example, more than 50 migrants requested abortions while in government custody, according to filings in an ACLU lawsuit against the Trump administration.

The civil rights group sued immigration officials on behalf of a Central American migrant referred to as Jane Doe, who was blocked when she was 17 years old from accessing abortion care and forced to go to a religiously affiliated “crisis pregnancy center” to coerce her to carry the baby to term against her will, even after she’d secured a court order allowing her to make medical decisions without her parents.

The case resulted in a 2020 announcement from ORR that it and its partner shelters can’t block or interfere with unaccompanied migrant minors’ access to reproductive healthcare, including abortions.

Immigration detention, where migrants often lack rudimentary English skills and under the complete power of US officials, can often be a perilous place for reproductive freedoms.

In December of 2020, more than 40 women came forward and said they forced into unwanted reproductive health procedures, including sterilisations, without full information or consent while under the detention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.