ABORTION/DHS/HHS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration’s policy of halting abortions among undocumented minors was established by email through an ad hoc process without formal legal vetting, according to new documents released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU, which is suing the administration over the policy, made public the December depositions of the director and the deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS office responsible for the care of undocumented minors who enter the country without their parents.
Though ORR is a relatively obscure corner of the sprawling agency, the new documents shed light on the broader improvised nature of how the administration sets policy — and raise questions about whether decisions violated existing state law and federal policy, according to depositions and emails released by the ACLU and conversations with former administration staffers… HHS said it does not comment on pending litigation, but in the past HHS officials said that ORR policy was ‘designed to protect children and their babies who have illegally crossed the border.’
The ORR’s policy of requiring the director’s approval before an unaccompanied minor can have an abortion was first laid out in a March 4, 2017, memo — a policy that was a sweeping departure from the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, which required the director’s signoff only when federal funds were requested to pay for the procedure. Under previous administrations, funds were granted when the minor was the victim of sexual abuse.”
-Renuka Rayasam, “Trump’s abortion policy sheds light on ad hoc decision-making,” Politico, Feb. 28, 2018 09:03pm