Last fall, Jane Doe, an undocumented teen being held in federal custody in Texas, was blocked by Trump-appointee Scott Lloyd from leaving a federal holding facility in order to get an abortion. Since then, at least seven teenagers in the custody of Lloyd’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) have requested and been denied abortions—and in at least three cases, the courts intervened. All the girls were eventually allowed to have the procedure but not before Lloyd personally intervened with some of the girls to try and change their minds.
As the head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the anti-choice Scott Lloyd is intent on implementing these inhumane policies. VICE News uncovered documents in February that show that “Lloyd receives a spreadsheet every week containing information on every pregnant teen in ORR’s custody, including the fetus’s gestational age and whether the teen has asked for an abortion.”
On Thursday, March 15, People For the American Way joined All* Above All and 22 other advocacy organizations and nonprofits to deliver more than 270,000 of your petition signatures calling on the Trump administration to restore access to comprehensive reproductive health care services for young immigrant women in federal custody and to fire Scott Lloyd.
U.S. Representatives Tony Cárdenas (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), rallied with advocates outside the Department of Health and Human Services to make our message heard: All people have the right to make decisions about their health and future with dignity and self-determination. Scott Lloyd's actions on behalf of the Trump administration are unconstitutional and he must go! Watch now: