A Border Patrol agent organizes a large group of illegal immigrants near Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 20, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

POLICIES & IMPACTS
Biden Administration Ensures Unaccompanied Minors’ Abortion Access Post Overturn of Roe v. Wade

By Terri Wu
November 11, 2022 Updated: November 12, 2022
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Biden administration has revised field guidance to ensure pregnant unaccompanied minors abortion access after the Supreme Court returned the abortion decision to states by overturning Roe v. Wade in June.
According to the guidance (pdf) the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) revised on Thursday, field specialists should prioritize placement of pregnant unaccompanied minors who requested an abortion in a state that allows abortions.

“The only instance in which a transfer may be made to a state that does not provide abortion access is if such a transfer will facilitate access to an abortion, such as providing a travel route, because the UC [unaccompanied children] will be placed in a different ORR facility geographically close to a lawful abortion care,” the document wrote.
Further, the rules require ORR staff to submit a transfer request “without delay and no later than within 24 hours of the UC’s request for an abortion.”
And the ORR field guidance makes an abortion a matter between the UC, ORR, and the medical staff who execute the operation. It says that ORR and medical staff “must not communicate information about a UC’s pregnancy (including the fact of the pregnancy) or UC’s decision on whether to have an abortion (before or after the abortion)” to individuals other than ORR federal staff and care providers directly involved in the UC’s case.”
On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the seminal 1973 precedent that essentially legalized abortion in the United States.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that in the first 185 years after the U.S. Constitution was adopted, “each state was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens,” but then, in 1973, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. Despite the Constitution not mentioning abortion, the court found that “it confers a broad right to obtain one.”
The court made no claim “that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law),” Alito wrote.
The previous October 2021 version of the ORR field guidance (pdf) centered around circumventing Texas in placing pregnant UCs who wanted an abortion. In Sept. 2021, Texas passed a Senate bill (pdf) that outlawed most abortions in the state.
ORR is a subsidiary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Biden Administration Ensures Unaccompanied Minors’ Abortion Access Post Overturn of Roe v. Wade (theepochtimes.com)