Supreme Court vacates ruling granting abortion rights to illegal immigrants

The Supreme Court on Monday erased a lower appeals court’s ruling that had found illegal immigrant teens in federal custody had a constitutional right to abortions facilitated by the U.S. government.

The ruling, delivered in an unsigned opinion, does not settle the big constitutional issues, but it does reset the playing field, erasing a precedent that had said illegal immigrants had abortion rights similar to an American held in government custody.

The case is one of a series of legal battles that erupted from the surge of illegal immigrant families and Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) over the past five years.

In the case of unaccompanied children, some of them arrived at the border pregnant, and when taken into custody demanded an abortion that, most likely, would have been illegal in their home countries.

Trump administration officials signed off on a few abortions but sought to impose conditions on some of the teens, such as informing their parents back in their home countries and pushing them to seek counseling from pro-life crisis pregnancy organizations.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the teens, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan sided with them, arguing that they deserved to have their abortions in the U.S. and she wouldn’t countenance sending them back to their home countries where the procedure might be illegal.

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