Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a friend-of-the-court brief with a U.S. District Court in San Francisco in defense of the federal government’s right to deny access to abortion services to an unlawfully-present minor alien in Texas. Immigration officials detained the unlawfully-present alien (“Doe”), who entered the U.S. without her parents, in a shelter funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Brownsville.
“No federal court has ever declared that unlawfully-present aliens with no substantial ties to this country have a constitutional right to abortion on demand,” Attorney General Paxton said. “If ‘Doe’ prevails in this case, the ruling will create a right to abortion for anyone on earth who enters the U.S. illegally. And with that right, countless others undoubtedly would follow. Texas must not become a sanctuary state for abortions.”
Attorney General Paxton told the court that “Texas has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life, as well as an interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages in a pregnancy.”
“Doe” first filed a lawsuit in Texas state court, seeking to compel Health and Human Services to take her to get an abortion. Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is asking a federal court in San Francisco to allow it to add “Doe” to a pending lawsuit against Health and Human Services and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops over a completely unrelated dispute.
Joining Texas on the amicus brief are the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.