Promptly and without delay

A court has ordered the Trump administration to let that teenage Jane Doe in Texas have her abortion even though the Feds have her in custody because she crossed the border from Mexico without papers.

Lawyers and advocates for the girl accused federal immigration and health officials of preventing her from having an abortion and of taking extraordinary steps to persuade her and other undocumented pregnant minors to have their babies rather than abort them.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Washington sided with the girl, sending the case back to a lower court, which immediately ordered the Trump administration to allow the girl to obtain an abortion “promptly and without delay.” The ruling may be only one of many legal chapters to come if the Justice Department decides to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

On what grounds, one wonders, since abortion is legal.

“It is the perfect storm between abortion and immigration, and the Trump administration has shown absolute hostility to both of those issues,” said Brigitte Amiri, the lead lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Jane Doe.

They hate immigrants (except rich white ones) and they hate abortion and they hate women, so what could be more fun for them than to torture a young immigrant woman by not letting her have an abortion? Three birds smashed with one stone.

A.C.L.U. lawyers said that in March, the Trump administration enacted a policy that requires the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the health department division that oversees the care of unaccompanied minors, to personally approve any abortion, a broad shift in how previous administrations handled the issue.

Advocates for abortion rights have accused the director, Scott Lloyd, of pushing anti-abortion beliefs onto the young women in federal custody.

In emails that were made public as part of another case, Mr. Lloyd appears to have personally met with undocumented pregnant teens in shelters and spoken with them about their pregnancies. After traveling to San Antonio in March and visiting with one minor at a shelter there, he wrote to some his staff that if things “get dicey” with the minor’s adult sponsor, “I know a few good families with a heart for these situations who would take her in in a heartbeat and see her through her pregnancy and beyond,” according to an email included in court documents.

At least she’ll be forced to go through childbirth when she doesn’t want to. They must be so happy when that happens.

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