A federal appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way for a 17-year-old immigrant held in custody in Texas to obtain an abortion. The full US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 6-3 in favor of the teen. The decision overturned a ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that at least temporarily blocked her from getting an abortion. The Trump administration could still appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Later Tuesday, in a separate order, a judge said the teen should be quickly taken to obtain required counseling and the abortion. Under Texas law, a woman seeking an abortion must have a counseling session 24 hours before the procedure with the doctor who will perform the abortion. The teen, whose name and country of origin have been withheld because she\u2019s a minor, is 15 weeks pregnant. She entered the US in September and learned she was pregnant while in federal custody in Texas.<\/p>\n
She obtained a state court order Sept. 25 permitting her to have an abortion. But federal officials refused to transport her or temporarily release her so that others could take her to have an abortion. Lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for sheltering children who illegally enter the country unaccompanied by a parent, said the department has a policy of \u201crefusing to facilitate\u201d abortions and that releasing the teenager would require arranging a transfer of custody and follow-up care.<\/p>\n
The teenager\u2019s lawyers have said all the government needed to do was \u201cget out of the way.\u201d An attorney appointed to represent the teen\u2019s interests said she could transport her to and from appointments necessary for the procedure, and the federal government would not have to pay for it. One of the six appeals court judges that sided with the teen Tuesday, Patricia Millett, wrote that the court\u2019s decision \u201crights a grave constitutional wrong.\u201d All six judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.<\/p>\n
Three judges, all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, dissented, with Judge Brett Kavanaugh writing that his colleagues\u2019 decision \u201cis ultimately based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in US Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lower court judge, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, had sided with the teen and set dates for the procedure last week, saying it should take place Friday or Saturday, but the government appealed and the three-judge panel of the appeals court blocked the abortion from occurring then. The panel ruled 2-1 on Friday that the government should have until Oct. 31 to release the teen into the custody of a so-called sponsor, such as a relative in the United States, so she could obtain the abortion outside government custody.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the full appeals court overruled the panel\u2019s decision and returned the case to Chutkan, saying she was \u201cbest suited\u201d to set new dates. Chutkan responded with an order saying the teen should be taken for counseling and the abortion \u201cpromptly and without delay.\u201d The teen had been allowed under an order from Chutkan to attend a counseling session last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way for a 17-year-old immigrant held in custody in Texas to obtain an abortion. The full US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 6-3 in favor of the teen. The decision overturned a ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[315,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8468,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions\/8468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}