An undocumented teen in federal custody ended her pregnancy Wednesday morning less than 24 hours after a judge’s order forced the government to allow the 17-year-old to be promptly transferred to an abortion facility.
The announcement from the teenager’s attorneys puts an end to case that raised difficult political questions and highlighted the Trump administration’s new policy of refusing to “facilitate” abortions for unaccompanied minors.
The teenager, identified only as Jane Doe in court papers, is being held in Texas for illegally entering the country and was nearly 16 weeks pregnant. Texas law bans most abortions after 20 weeks.
“Justice prevailed today for Jane Doe. But make no mistake about it, the administration’s efforts to interfere in women’s decisions won’t stop with Jane,” said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project who represented the teen.
The teenager’s procedure came after a weeks-long legal battle that moved swiftly through the courts, with judges issuing contradictory rulings.
On Tuesday, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit took the unusual step of reversing a three-judge panel of the same court without first holding oral argument. The panel decision would have postponed the abortion.
Instead, the D.C. Circuit’s 6-3 ruling sent the case back to a judge, who hours later ordered the government to “promptly and without delay” transport the teen to a Texas abortion provider.
In a statement provided Wednesday by the ACLU, the teenager said she knew immediately after learning of her pregnancy after her border crossing that she was “not ready to be a parent.”
The government-funded shelter, her statement said, would not allow her to get an abortion.
“Instead, they made me see a doctor that tried to convince me not to abort and to look at sonograms. People I don’t even know are trying to make me change my mind. I made my decision and that is between me and God. Through all of this, I have never changed my mind.”
It was not immediately clear where the abortion was performed, but her attorneys said last week that she had already received the counseling Texas law requires at least 24 hours in advance of an abortion.
The D.C. Circuit’s ruling on Tuesday was opposed by the court’s three active judges nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said the majority has “badly erred” and created a new right for undocumented immigrant minors in custody to “immediate abortion on demand.”
Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson went further in a separate dissent finding the undocumented teenager has no constitutional right to an elective abortion. “To conclude otherwise rewards lawlessness and erases the fundamental difference between citizenship and illegal presence in our country,” she wrote.
Lawyers for the undocumented teenager asked the full appeals court to rehear her case after a divided panel gave the Department of Health and Human Services until Oct. 31 to find a sponsor to take custody of the girl.
Brigitte Amiri, the teen’s American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said the girl’s court-appointed guardian was thrilled to tell her that she could terminate her pregnancy after the full appeals court order.
“We should never have had to go all the way to a full appellate court to say what we know is the law: that the government can’t ban abortion for anybody,” Amiri said.
Democratic lawmakers have demanded answers from HHS Acting Secretary Eric Hargan about why the Trump administration quietly changed federal policy to deny access to abortions for minors in custody.
Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS agency that oversees the minors, said in a March email that government-funded shelters caring for the minors “should not be supporting abortion services pre or post-release; only pregnancy services and life-affirming options counseling.”
Lawyers for the teenager argued the government was violating the girl’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion. The teenager has already received permission from a Texas judge to bypass the state’s parental consent requirement and terminate her pregnancy.
“Her capacity to make the decision about what is in her best interests by herself was approved by a Texas court,” Millett wrote Tuesday.
Millett and five other judges nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents voted to reinstate the lower court’s initial order allowing the abortion. Judge Cornelia T. L. Pillard was recused. Her spouse is the ACLU’s legal director.
In last week’s 2-1 decision, Kavanaugh and Henderson gave HHS until next week to find a sponsor to take custody of the girl. That would have allowed her to be released and to seek the abortion without government involvement.
Government lawyers had said prospective sponsors have inquired about the teenager. But the girl’s lawyers on Sunday filed a sworn statement from the former ORR director during the Obama administration who described the lengthy process of vetting sponsors.
In his dissent Tuesday, Kavanaugh said the government should be able to “expeditiously transfer” the teenager to a sponsor — typically a relative or friend — who could help her make a major life decision. The government, Kavanaugh wrote, “is merely seeking to place the minor in a better place when deciding whether to have an abortion.”
Millett disputed the idea that the sponsorship process would have gone quickly.
“There is nothing expeditious about the prolonged and complete barrier to [the teenager’s] exercise of her right to terminate her pregnancy that the panel order allowed the government to perpetuate.”
Government officials have also said they are not blocking the girl from getting an abortion because she could voluntarily return to her home country. The government, however, acknowledged that abortion is illegal in the girl’s home country, which is not identified in filings.
Matt Zapotosky and Robert Barnes contributed to this report.
That was a departure from China’s carefully scripted transfers of power in recent decades and a possible signal that Mr. Xi intends to govern beyond this next five-year term. Mr. Xi may also want more time to test possible successors, while avoiding lame duck status with an heir waiting in the wings.
But by discarding the unspoken conventions that have ensured relatively stable leadership changes in recent years, Mr. Xi has pushed Chinese politics into new territory that critics have warned could lead to turmoil, or a cult of personality with echoes of Mao.
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Soldiers marching in front of the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday. Credit
Roman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency
“If Xi goes for broke and breaks precedent by not preparing for an orderly and peaceful succession, he is putting a target on his back and risking a backlash from other ambitious politicians,” Susan L. Shirk, the chairwoman of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.
“By taking such a risk, he shows himself to be more like Mao than we originally thought — he demonstrates his power by overturning institutions,” said Professor Shirk, a former State Department deputy assistant secretary for China policy.
In a possible nod to such concerns, most of the new Standing Committee members were not longtime associates of Mr. Xi, though all have worked with him in some capacity. Mr. Li, the premier, was once seen as a possible rival to Mr. Xi to lead the country.
Among the new members were Wang Yang, 62, a vice premier who promoted himself as a can-do reformer while party chief of Guangdong Province in southern China, and Han Zheng, a former mayor of Shanghai who is credited with guiding that city’s emergence as China’s glittering financial and business capital. Neither had a long history of working closely with Mr. Xi before he became president in 2012.
Other new members have worked alongside Mr. Xi for years. They included Li Zhanshu, his longtime friend and aide, and Wang Huning, a former professor turned party ideologue who has helped craft Mr. Xi’s speeches and reports. An expert on international politics, Mr. Wang also advised Mr. Xi’s predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and as a young scholar wrote a book, “America Opposes America,” based on a six-month visit to the United States.
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The seventh member, Zhao Leji, served as head of the party’s organization department and will assume leadership of its anticorruption agency, succeeding Wang Qishan, perhaps Mr. Xi’s most powerful lieutenant. Mr. Wang has retired as scheduled, despite speculation that Mr. Xi might try to keep him on the committee.
“Xi has seemingly chosen magnanimity with the list,” said Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Of course, that’s easy to do when you’ve achieved your two core objectives — making yourself the party’s untenured ideological arbiter and refraining from signaling the succession.”
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A live broadcast in a subway car in Beijing showing Mr. Xi introducing members of the Politburo Standing Committee. Credit
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
Mr. Xi’s victory at the congress means he will welcome President Trump to China next month more confident than ever in his hold on power and in his pursuit of a more assertive foreign policy. His signature initiatives to extend China’s influence overseas, such as the global infrastructure program known as “One Belt, One Road” and a drive to build artificial islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, are likely to get a boost.
Some China watchers have said they also expect Mr. Xi to place more emphasis on overhauling the economy and cleaning up finances, after spending the past five years stamping out dissent and tightening his control over the party and the military, China’s other political power center.
One sign he may do so was the promotion of Liu He, his closest economic adviser and a longtime advocate of curbing debt and financial hazards. As a new member of the Politburo, a broader 25-member council that is less powerful than its Standing Committee, Mr. Liu appears likely to wield greater influence on policy.
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In his remarks Wednesday, Mr. Xi noted that next year would mark 40 years since Deng Xiaoping opened up China to market forces and vowed to “firmly and unwaveringly deepen reform in every aspect.”
Few experts expect Mr. Xi will take big steps toward market liberalization, but many believe he must move to limit financial risk. After decades of rapid growth, China faces growing economic challenges that include mountains of debt held by local governments and inefficient state-owned conglomerates.
“He wants a team around him that will implement his vision,” said Evan S. Medeiros, the former senior director for Asian affairs in the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. “On economic issues, one could tentatively say that this Politburo Standing Committee is more reform-minded than the current lineup.”
The party congress, the party’s 19th since its establishment by Marxist revolutionaries in 1921, has portrayed Mr. Xi as a transformational leader guiding the nation into a “new era” of Chinese socialism. Mao unified China after nearly a century of civil war and foreign invasions, Deng brought it prosperity and Mr. Xi is said to be restoring the nation to global strength and leadership.
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A conductor leading a military band during the closing ceremony of this week’s congress, the party’s 19th since its founding in 1921. Credit
Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
The congress blessed his one-man style of rule by writing his name and ideas into the party’s constitution, in effect declaring any effort to challenge him to be an act of ideological heresy.
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Under Mao and then Deng, the party struggled with succession arrangements that ended in purges and division. Then, in the 1990s, the party established a pattern of installing likely successors on the Standing Committee well in advance, with party leaders serving no more than two terms.
Mr. Xi himself joined the committee in 2007, before taking power in 2012. Before him, Mr. Hu served on the committee for a decade before succeeding Mr. Jiang.
The inclusion of one or two officials in their 50s in the new Standing Committee would have suggested they were being groomed to take over from Mr. Xi in five years. Instead, the party’s failure to promote anyone of that age will ignite speculation that Mr. Xi wants to extend his influence beyond the end of his second term.
China’s national constitution says that he cannot serve more than two terms as president, but Mr. Xi could stay on in other posts, as the party leader or chairman of the armed forces, for example, or create a new role to preserve his power. Other experts believe Mr. Xi will formally retire in five years, after selecting successors he is confident will uphold his policies.
The party has promoted a phalanx of officials loyal to Mr. Xi into the broader Politburo. About two-thirds of the 15 new members joining the body once worked under Mr. Xi or have other longstanding ties to him, including some younger leaders seen as potential successors.
They included Chen Min’er, 57, who worked as a propaganda functionary with Mr. Xi when they were both officials in the eastern province of Zhejiang in the early 2000s. Some experts had speculated that Mr. Xi might attempt to catapult Mr. Chen into the current Standing Committee, a move that would have made him the heir apparent.
Instead, Mr. Chen is one of four Politburo members under the age of 60 who could be considered a candidate to lead the country in five years — but only if Mr. Xi relinquishes control.
