The Trump administration just made its most Orwellian attack on abortion
The United States government is holding a woman prisoner to keep her from obtaining an abortion.
Let that fact sink in for a moment. The core issue at the heart of Garza v. Hargan is whether the coercive power of the state can be used to hold someone prisoner to keep them from obtaining an abortion.
It’s important to remember this fact — again, that the most powerful nation on the planet has locked up a woman to stop her from terminating her pregnancy — because the Trump administration wants a panel of three federal judges to believe that Garza is about something else. They want you to think this is a case about whether the Constitution requires the government to “affirmatively facilitate” an “elective abortion.” But this isn’t just a bad legal argument, it’s a bad factual argument. It is an Orwellian argument.
The case revolves around a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant, referred to by the pseudonym “J.D.,” who is currently being held in a government facility. Pursuant to federal law, unaccompanied minors are held in a facility run by the Department of Health and Human Services, which holds them there until a relative in the United States steps forward as the minor’s “sponsor,” until the minor agrees to voluntarily depart the country, or until the minor is deported.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-administration-orwellian-attack-abortion-da5b93ae0f4a/
But, of course, there’s a glaring problem with this argument. The only reason why J.D. cannot simply walk into an abortion clinic herself is that she is being held prisoner by the government. If that doesn’t constitute a “substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus,” then it’s hard to imagine that anything does.
