The ACLU is suing President Donald Trump’s administration for focusing on helping pregnant undocumented immigrants and refugees find life-affirming alternatives to abortion.
Earlier this year, the Office of Refugee Resettlement issued a new policy requiring that taxpayer-funded shelters for immigrants and refugees offer life-affirming support to women and girls who are pregnant, according to Slate, a pro-abortion blog site.
Abortion activists are upset by the new policy, especially because the administration encourages shelters to take women and girls to life-affirming pregnancy resource centers.
Earlier this year, office Director Scott Lloyd, a Trump nominee, said the shelters may not take “any action that facilitates” an abortion for unaccompanied minors without his direct approval.
Lloyd said that “grantees should not be supporting abortion services … only pregnancy services and life-affirming options counseling.”
The ACLU is suing the office as a result. The lawsuit is on behalf of “Jane Doe,” an undocumented minor who is pregnant at a Texas shelter and wants to abort her unborn baby, according to the report. The pro-abortion legal group claims the federal office violated the girl’s constitutional rights by refusing to help her get an abortion through a taxpayer-funded shelter.
According to the report, the shelter took the girl to a pro-life pregnancy resource center instead. The ACLU said the girl did not change her mind after receiving counseling, and scheduled an abortion; however, the shelter where she is staying refused to help her get to the appointment.
It appears that the girl still is at the shelter and still is pregnant.
The ACLU also claims there was a similar situation in March involving an unaccompanied minor in Texas who had trouble getting an abortion while staying at a taxpayer-funded shelter.
Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com
Here’s more from the pro-abortion slanted report:
The Trump administration has taken a keen interest in the pregnancy status of unaccompanied immigrant minors at federally funded shelters. According to the ACLU, Lloyd, the current ORR director, has personally called pregnant minors in an attempt to talk them out of terminating their pregnancies. He has also formalized the agency’s anti-abortion policies through various regulations. Shelters are, for instance, proscribed from taking “any steps that facilitate future [abortion] procedures,” including “scheduling appointments, transportation, or other arrangement,” without Lloyd’s “written authorization”—which he consistently refuses to provide. Under the current policy, minors who want to get an abortion must also be taken to a crisis pregnancy center to be “counseled” out of their decision.
In its motion to block the government from denying Doe abortion access, the ACLU claims that these policies violate immigrant minors’ constitutional right to access abortion …
The policy is a stark contrast to pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s administration, which mandated that unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children be given access to abortion at taxpayer-funded shelters. The Obama Administration also put abortion ahead of human trafficking victims by denying grants to Catholic charities because they wouldn’t help victims get abortions.
Trump and his appointees have taken a number of pro-life steps forward during his first year in office.
Over the summer, his administration cut several million dollars in taxpayer-funded sex education grants to the Planned Parenthood abortion business. It also cut several more million dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to the abortion chain for helping people sign up for Obamacare.
Trump also defunded the International Planned Parenthood abortion group during his first week in office. On Jan. 23, Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits U.S. taxpayer funding to groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. The policy does not stop non-abortion international assistance. It ensures U.S. foreign aid will continue to go to health care and humanitarian relief in the millions of dollars. It just will not subsidize abortion overseas.
