Planned Parenthood—the nation’s largest provider of abortions—is demanding the Trump administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) director be fired after he declined to approve an abortion for an illegal immigrant teen who claimed to have been raped.
In declining to authorize the illegal immigrant’s abortion, ORR director Scott Lloyd wrote in a memo, “I disagree,” with the notion that declining to help a woman who became pregnant as a result of rape to obtain an abortion is “a form of violence against the mother.”
“This memo makes clear that Scott Lloyd should immediately be removed from his position as director of ORR,” said Dana Singiser, Vice President of Public Policy and Government Affairs of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). “He is unfit to serve in government. Lloyd is imposing his personal beliefs on the young women in his agency’s care—to control their bodies and violate their constitutional rights. His overreach and abuse of power puts these young women’s lives in danger.”
Planned Parenthood is urging its supporters to send letters to their members of Congress, demanding that Lloyd be fired.
“Scott Lloyd and other Trump-Pence administration officials are willing to put women’s health, lives, and rights at risk to further their own extreme agendas,” states the abortion provider, adding:
Scott Lloyd may think that as undocumented immigrants, these women are not entitled to basic rights or control over their own bodies, but these women deserve support and justice. This is unconstitutional and unacceptable. It’s time for Scott Lloyd to go.
Abortion rights political lobbying organization NARAL also protested Lloyd’s decision to decline approval of the late-term abortion:
Abortion advocates such as Planned Parenthood cite the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, in which the high court created a right to abortion, when no right had ever existed in the Constitution.
Lloyd explained in his memo that the illegal immigrant teen, referred to as “Jane Poe,” claimed she became pregnant as a result of rape by an attacker, but also said she had “a boyfriend in her home country with whom she had intercourse.”
“Several weeks after the assault, she made the journey to the United States where she attempted to cross the border illegally, but was apprehended at the border,” he continued, further indicating the teen was persistent in expressing her desire for an abortion.
“At nearly 22 weeks, the child has at least a fighting chance at survival if born,” Lloyd wrote. “The most likely method of abortion in this instance is Dilation and Evacuation abortion. This particular form of abortion is one that even many abortionists find troublesome.”
Pro-life organization March for LifeAction tweeted its support for Lloyd’s decision:
Lloyd cited the words of abortionist Dr. Lisa Harris, who admitted, “There is violence in abortion, especially in second trimester procedures.”
Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) abortions are also known as “dismemberment” abortions, in which the abortionist tears the limbs from the unborn baby, who bleeds to death prior to being evacuated from the mother’s uterus.
Lloyd continued:
Certainly, it is understandable that a woman who is pregnant from the vile actions of a criminal would want to terminate her pregnancy. I do not, and am in no position to, judge anyone who has taken such an action or supported another in doing so.
But I cannot authorize our program to participate in the abortion requested here, even in this most difficult case. Here, where the pregnancy is advanced to such a late stage, we have in stark relief the reality that abortion entails, as Dr. Harris candidly admitted, violence that has the ultimate destruction of another human being as its goal.
…
Implicit here are the dubious notions that it is possible to cure violence with further violence, and that the destruction of an unborn child’s life can in some instances be acceptable as a means to an end. To decline to assist in an abortion here is to decline to participate in violence against an innocent life. She remains pregnant, but this is not the intent of our actions. Moral and criminal responsibility for the pregnancy lies with the attacker, and no one else.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington, DC, an Obama appointee, issued a temporary restraining order that would allow the teens, called “Jane Roe” and Jane Poe,” to obtain abortions. The judge stayed her order for 24 hours to allow the Trump administration the chance to appeal the order.
However, as Christian News reports, U.S. government attorneys did not appeal the matter, and also transferred the other girl—who claimed to be 17, but was actually discovered to be 19—to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without charges of perjury.
Margot Cleveland analyzes the “odd” turn of events in the matter at the Federalist.
“While the government’s decision to release Roe rather than initiate removal or criminal proceedings for perjury may seem strange, DHS apparently facilitates abortions for adult detainees, so waving Roe on allows the government to wash its hands of complicity in the killing of her unborn baby,” Cleveland writes. “But why, then, did the government stand down in protecting Poe’s unborn baby—who at 22 weeks old had a shot at survival?”
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