Justice for Jane Doe: A New York attorney becomes the face of a crucial abortion rights case

NEW YORK — Brigitte Amiri, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, was spending the weekend on Long Island with her family in late September when she got the call about Jane Doe.

She wasn’t Jane Doe just yet. She was a pregnant 17-year-old immigrant from Central America being held in federal custody after entering the U.S. illegally. She’d obtained a judge’s permission to get an abortion. But the Office of Refugee Resettlement — a branch of the Trump administration responsible for unaccompanied immigrant minors — wouldn’t allow it.

It required Jane Doe to visit a “crisis pregnancy center,” where she has said staff tried to discourage her from having an abortion and prayed for her. When she persisted, ORR blocked her from traveling to an abortion clinic.

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