Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in August 2016 issued a policy recommending that pregnant people “generally not be detained.” Aside from incidents of mandatory detention or extraordinary circumstances, ICE followed that strategy.

But there are indications that the federal immigration agency has revoked that policy and is now detaining pregnant people “at the rate of one per day,” according to advocates.

These are women like Sara, a 27-year-old Honduran woman, and Emma, who migrated to the United States from El Salvador with her five-year-old son. Both were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, one of the nation’s three family detention centers. After being raped, Sara fled Honduras with her 8-year-old daughter. After experiencing violence and receiving death threats in El Salvador, Emma was raped and tortured in Mexico while en route to the United States. Upon being taken into custody, both women informed immigration officials that they were pregnant, yet they remained detained by ICE. Sara was released after a week, while Emma and her child were detained for at least 20 days.

Cases like Sara’s and Emma’s have been detailed in an administrative complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on behalf of pregnant people detained by ICE. The organizations behind the complaint assert that ICE has failed to implement its policy limiting the detention of pregnant people, while subjecting them to inhumane conditions and inadequate medical care. These organizations include the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Immigration Council (AIC), the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Center for Refugee and Gender Studies, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and the Women’s Refugee Commission.

Emma, in the complaint, details her fears concerning her pregnancy and her experiences in the U.S. immigration system after presenting herself as an asylum seeker at the port of entry, in accordance with asylum law:

I wanted to explain to the immigration officer who processed me about my rape and show him that my fingernails were missing [as part of the torture inflicted on her], but he said, “No, don’t tell me anything. You all say the same thing.” I told the immigration officials at the border that I might be pregnant but that I was bleeding. They took me in a car to a hospital. I was given two ultrasounds: one of my stomach and one of my vagina. The doctor told me that I was pregnant and that my pregnancy was high risk. He told me that I have an infection, and gave me pills.

I was taken back to the border, where we slept in the cold on very thin mattresses. Most people were given only aluminum blankets but I as given a real one. I still could not sleep, however, because there were so many children crying. I could not eat because the smell of food makes me want to vomit.

All of these experiences have been very traumatizing for me. I have not heard any news of my four children, but am afraid to try to contact them because of my husband. I also know that my husband will kill me if he ever finds out that I got pregnant by another man. At the same time, I do not want to have this baby, and especially not from rape. However, I am from a Christian church and know that it would be a sin not to have the baby and am afraid of having a miscarriage due to my big-risk pregnancy. It is very stressful for me to be in detention while going through all of these difficult emotions, and not feeling well.

Katie Shepherd, the national advocacy counsel for the Immigration Justice Campaign at AIC, said ICE detaining pregnant women on a daily basis becomes “more significant” if the context is understood: Many of the women are pregnant as a result of rape. Eighty percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped along the way, according to a 2014 report from Fusion.

Beginning in the fall of 2015, Shepherd spent nearly a year working as AIC’s managing attorney at Dilley. If members of AIC encountered a pregnant person in the detainee population, they would notify ICE if the agency hadn’t caught it during the medical screening at intake. Those people, almost immediately, would be transferred out of Dilley.

In November 2016, Shepherd noticed a shift. This was during the time when Haitian immigrants were being detained in large numbers and Shepherd experienced difficulty securing the release of a pregnant Haitian woman. In early 2017, pregnant people were “sporadically being detained,” but the national advocacy counsel said that in recent months there has been a “huge uptick” in the number of pregnant people detained. Shepherd says it’s her estimation that one new pregnant woman a day is being detained and unlike before, women aren’t being released until after they pass their credible fear interview. Pregnant people were once released immediately no matter where they were in the asylum process, which includes a credible fear interview with an asylum officer to determine if they have legitimate reasons to fear returning to their country of origin. If they fail this interview, they are deported.

“Not only have women experienced a lot of trauma from being raped, from the violence they are fleeing [in their countries of origin], but then they have the experience of being detained while pregnant and the pressure of having to pass this life-altering interview while enduring all of this. It can’t be overstated how these conditions have a negative impact on their case and impact their ability to present their case,” Shepherd said.

Amy Fischer, policy director at RAICES, told Rewire that ICE’s policy regarding pregnant people in detention likely came about because of the type of concerns advocacy organizations outlined in their complaint to DHS.

“As our complaint details, women are currently experiencing miscarriages because of terrible medical care, as well as complications to their pregnancy because of inadequate medical care. In 2016, ICE recognized there were dangers associated with detaining women who are pregnant. Its policy was an attempt to address this, but now we’re seeing them backtrack on it,” Fischer said.

Fischer, whose organization RAICES primarily works with women in family detention, said that until very recently, ICE had a clear policy on how it treated women in the detention system: Girls and women ages 10-56 were given pregnancy tests upon intake into a facility. If they were found to be pregnant, they were released from detention within 24 hours. The complaint details multiple instances in which pregnancy tests issued by ICE came out as negative, though the women were later found to be pregnant. Shepherd said this is illustrative of the care that people in detention receive, but nevertheless, when advocacy organizations who were working directly with women in detention suspected a woman was showing signs of pregnancy, she was referred to ICE, who issued another pregnancy test. If the results were positive, she was released.

“Everyone who is part of the complaint has had different experiences with ICE as it relates to its policy concerning pregnant women, but what we all had in common was the experience that getting a pregnant woman out of detention wasn’t hard. All of our experiences over the last couple of months seems to indicate that there may have been an internal memo or communication of some kind that informed staff ICE’s previous policy was being changed or revoked because the new approach of holding women who were pregnant until after they passed their credible fear interviews appears widespread. We’re seeing this at Karnes and Dilley [family detention centers] and at detention centers around the country,” Fischer said.

There has been a sizable increase in the detention of women migrants under President Trump. As of April 2016, around 4,829 women were detained in ICE facilities, including family detention centers, constituting 14.6 percent of the total detained population in ICE custody that day, according to information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on file with the Women’s Refugee Commission. Immigration arrests of women increased by 35 percent in the first four months of 2017, compared to the same period in 2016, KUOW reported, and “292 pregnant women were held in ICE detention centers nationwide” during the first four months of this year.

ICE told Reveal that as of September 13, it was holding 33 pregnant people in custody.

Shepherd told Rewire that none of the pregnant people in detention she has encountered were subject to mandatory detention or being held because of “extraordinary circumstances,” which translates to being considered flight risks or having criminal histories. That means there’s no reason ICE should have held them after confirming they were pregnant, Shepherd said.

By holding pregnant people, ICE is in direct violation of its own memo and of “accepted medical standards and practices concerning pregnant women,” according to the organizations behind the complaint. But ICE is also in violation of larger standards of care, including the Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) addressing medical care for women and ICE Family Residential Standards.

Family Residential Standards are vague, saying only that “female residents will have access to pregnancy testing and specified pregnancy management services.” Under certain circumstances, abortion care is provided in the PBNDS, but abortion is not outlined in the Family Residential Standards that apply to family detention centers, which is where Central American asylum seeking women who migrated with their children are detained. In other words, the people most likely to experience rape migrating to the United States may not have abortion as an option once they are inevitably funneled into family detention.

Shepherd said ICE should immediately release anyone found to be pregnant, but if the agency is going to revoke its policy, the least ICE officials could do is offer specialized care and all of the services outlined in the PBNDS and Family Residential Standards, as well as counseling.

“One thing that’s not stressed enough in any of the standards is access to psychological services,” Shepherd said. “There is overlap between a person’s mental state and the physical symptoms they are experiencing, all of which translate to additional obstacles women face when presenting their cases.”

Shepherd has encountered numerous cases in which people in detention have had to ask for specialized care repeatedly, including when they were bleeding, experiencing back and stomach pain, or showing other signs of complications. In some instances, it was known by ICE that these people had high-risk pregnancies.

Advocates said ICE is attempting to justify detaining pregnant people by claiming it’s an effort to give them access to counsel. Fischer told Rewire that an attorney with RAICES working at Karnes, a family detention center in Texas, was told by ICE that pregnant people were being detained “to help them have their credible fear interview, because they were previously missing out on that process.” Anyone with a valid asylum claim can apply for asylum without ever being detained, so ICE’s assertion is “dishonest at best,” according to Fischer.

“One of my biggest concerns is that under Trump, the detention system will only expand and there has already been a lot of talk about reducing the standards in these facilities. We were incredibly critical of how the Obama administration expanded detention and deportation, but the biggest difference under the Trump administration is what appears to be a total lack of concern for the welfare of immigrants in custody,” Fischer said. “We’re already seeing a lot of in-custody deaths. Our fear is that no concern will be shown regarding the fact that ICE is detaining vulnerable pregnant women who have experienced a great deal of trauma already. Not only will they be detained, but they are being detained in facilities under inhumane conditions with substandard medical care, and they have very little recourse to hold anyone accountable.”

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2017/09/28/ice-going-pregnant-people/

The Trump administration announced in early July that Brenda Fitzgerald, a Georgia OB-GYN and the state’s commissioner of public health, would head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), raising questions about the potential effects of politically-charged decisions by the critical agency.

Researchers who track the relationship between public health policy and reproductive rights said a CDC chief’s actions can have wide-reaching consequences.

“Public health is one of these disciplines where nobody really thinks about it until there is a crisis,” says Caitlin Gerdts, vice president for research at Ibis Reproductive Health.

Gerdts, a reproductive epidemiologist, told Rewire that while many don’t consider the importance of public health until there is “some kind of disease outbreak or a public health system failure … we are all, every single day, living with the benefits of centuries now of important public health interventions—anything from refrigeration, to vaccination, to sanitation has all come from public health.”

That is just one of the reasons why the work the CDC does is so important. Among its public health initiatives are programs that focus specifically on reproductive health research. According to Gerdts, “paying attention to and advancing the science around preventative health care and reproductive health, and access to reproductive health, is a critical function of the CDC.”

Lawrence B. Finer, vice president for domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute, told Rewire that the CDC’s work “makes contributions to not just health treatment, but health research in a very broad range of areas,” including reproductive health. Citing the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) as an example, Finer explained that the program functions as “an incredibly important source of information on data on health in the U.S., specifically with regards to reproductive health.”

The NCHS collects data used to drive policy, and one of those data sets—the National Survey of Family Growth—is “probably the most important survey of reproductive health behaviors” in the country, Finer said.

That survey is “the best source of information in the U.S. on sexual activity, contraceptive usage, behavior and pregnancy intentions, pregnancies and their outcomes—the full range of reproductive health behaviors in the U.S.,” he said.

The CDC also houses a division that oversees reproductive health and, according to its website, “provides technical assistance, consultation, and training worldwide to help others identify and address male and female reproductive issues, maternal health, and infant health issues.”

While these programs exist within the agency, how they function and are prioritized can change at the discretion of presidential administrations. Gerdts pointed to the CDC’s work on abortion under the Reagan administration as an example. In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, there was “a push towards monitoring of abortion and … a great deal of interest in tracking maternal mortality throughout the country,” including the “negative health effects of unsafe abortion in our country,” she said.

“During the Reagan administration, that work really came to a halt because the administration was anti-choice and it was not a priority.”

In 1989, a congressional committee alleged that the Reagan administration had “suppressed research on abortion because they opposed the procedure,” according to an article published that year in New Scientist. The magazine reported that David Grimes, who had worked as chief of the Abortion Surveillance Branch at the CDC, testified about the work the Republican administration had done to push its anti-choice agenda:

According to Grimes, in 1983, the White House wanted Willard Cates, then in charge of the reproductive health division of the CDC, to be fired or transferred because he appeared to back abortion. Cates was demoted and moved to the section on sexually transmitted diseases.

Grimes also told the committee that the CDC censored two articles he had written for medical journals, one because it mentioned the word abortion twice in a manuscript of approximately 5000 words. In 1985, the CDC assembled a group of experts to write guidelines to prevent transmission of AIDS from mother to fetus. ‘It was tacitly understood by everyone present that the word ‘abortion’ could not appear in a federal document during the Reagan administration,’ Grimes told the committee. The published guidelines made no mention of abortion as an option for a pregnant woman infected with HIV.

Even under pro-choice administrations that have primarily relied on evidence-based decision-making, how the president handles abortion and reproductive health can have an outsized effect on CDC policy. “I think it is particularly challenging to be a CDC employee in a country where, you know, they are charged with advancing science but there are laws on the books—I can think specifically of the Helms Amendment—that can often be misinterpreted,” said Gerdts.

Though President Barack Obama largely supported abortion access, he never clarified if the Helms Amendment, which bans foreign assistance for abortion, applied to cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment.

“While [the Helms Amendment] is really meant to prevent any funding from going to provide abortions, many of the federal agencies interpreted it as sort of a muzzle, and really shy away from even talking about scientific evidence around abortion,” said Gerdts. “So the Zika advisory and sort of guidance the CDC issued for clinicians really didn’t include pregnancy options counseling.”

Under an administration hostile to abortion and evidence-based science, things could get even worse—a major concern given the Trump administration’s embrace of anti-choice activism and disregard for science on abortion and contraception.

A science-averse CDC director could “bring back into the public eye sort of sham science,” Gerdtz said. “You can think of in the reproductive health realm …. connections between abortion and breast cancer, which have been highlighted by ‘scientists’ who are anti-choice and who review things not using rigorous methods but who are advocating for propagating these sham connections as a way of stoking fear in the public around the safety of abortion.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in a press release announcing her appointment said he believed Fitzgerald would bring her knowledge of medicine to the CDC.

“Having known Dr. Fitzgerald for many years, I know that she has a deep appreciation and understanding of medicine, public health, policy and leadership—all qualities that will prove vital as she leads the CDC in its work to protect America’s health 24/7,” he said.

Fitzgerald discussed her vision for the future of public health in an interview this year with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “A strong, capable, and fully functional public health system is essential for this country to have a sufficient and effective healthcare system,” she said. “Public health does those things that the private sector simply does not, and quite possibly cannot, do.”

Though Fitzgerald’s most recent position was as Georgia’s public health commissioner, she also worked as an advisor on health care to Republican Newt Gingrich and mounted two failed Congressional campaigns in the early 1990s.

A 1994 news report describing Fitzgerald’s position on abortion said she believed “the federal government should not fund abortion and opposes the freedom of choice act, but says the ultimate decision should be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor.” The Freedom of Choice Act, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993, said that states “may not restrict the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy” before fetal viability or “if such termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman.”

During her unsuccessful 1994 bid for the GOP nomination to represent Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House, Fitzgerald’s position on abortion rights became a contentious issue. Though Fitzgerald reportedly advocated for some abortion restrictions at the time, she did not endorse an “effort to outlaw abortions through a constitutional mandate,” leading several anti-choice groups to target her by distributing thousands of voter cards saying she was opposed to a “sanctity of life amendment,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

One of Fitzgerald’s opponents in the race suggested that she had performed abortions in her capacity as an OB-GYN, another article from the Journal-Constitution reported. Fitzgerald reportedly denied the claim.

Fitzgerald worked in private practice before being tapped by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) to serve in the state’s health department. While working as health commissioner, Fitzgerald launched an anti-obesity program in partnership with Coca-Cola.

As the Intercept reported, “Muhtar Kent, the chief executive and chairman of Coca-Cola Company, appeared with the governor and Fitzgerald to promote the initiative, along with a pledge of $1 million from his company to fund it. Clyde Tuggle, a Coca-Cola executive responsible for the company’s lobbying strategy, was initially appointed to the board overseeing the state anti-obesity strategy, including Fitzgerald’s SHAPE initiative.”

Unlike many other programs designed to curb obesity, “the Georgia SHAPE program notably eschewed another well-known step toward healthier living: curbing sugary beverage consumption,” the Interceptnoted.

Screenshots of Fitzgerald’s biography from the Georgia health department show she identified herself as having worked in “anti-aging medicine,” according to a report from Forbes. And in screenshots from 2010, the doctor’s medical practice boasts that along with “seeing traditional gynecologic patients, we see both men and women for hormonal, nutritional, and other anti-aging concerns.”

“I’m so disappointed that the first female OB-GYN picked to head the CDC is someone who embraces the unproven and anti-scientific claims of the so-called anti-aging movement,” Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network, told Forbes.

While she didn’t comment on Fitzgerald’s appointment, Gerdts told Rewire she has a “deep respect” for those who work at the CDC. “Ensuring that they are able to do the job that they are there to do, to help the public understand what science really is and how to advance public health, is so so important,” she said.

“And reproductive health is such a crucial part of that,” she continued. “I am hopeful that any new Trump [appointment] to the CDC also adheres to the long-standing principles” of the agency.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2017/07/24/trump-run-cdc-mean-sham-science-government-policy/

Anti-choice activists are baselessly questioning election results and lamenting a massive blow to their agenda after Democrat Doug Jones’ stunning victoryagainst Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s special election for the U.S. Senate Tuesday.

Many in the media suggested Jones’ pro-choice views could keep him from winning the race, and Moore attempted to use the issue to distract from allegations that he sexually abused a minor and engaged in inappropriate behavior with other young women. Moore’s radical views on abortion, which include support for so-called personhood legislation that would criminalize abortion and ban some forms of contraception, made him a favorite of anti-choice advocates. Many leaders in the movement to outlaw abortion care continued to support him in the face of the allegations of sexual misconduct.

As Moore refuses to concede the race to Jones, many in the anti-choice community are grappling with the ramifications of losing Jeff Sessions’ former Senate seat.

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, blamed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for Moore’s loss in a Wednesday press release, calling on the Senate majority leader to step down and claiming that Congress would no longer be able to pass anti-choice legislation after Moore’s defeat.”It is my opinion that Sen. Mitch McConnell heavily contributed to Moore’s defeat, and because that led to giving a seat away to a pro-abortion Democrat, he should resign immediately,” he said.

“McConnell has ensured that pro-life legislation will never pass, Planned Parenthood will never be defunded, and babies that can feel pain will continue to be aborted after the mid-point of pregnancy,” Newman said in his statement, referring to the GOP’s attempts to pass a 20-week abortion ban based on the unsupported claim that a fetus feels pain at that point in a pregnancy.

Newman, who is notorious for using violent and extreme rhetoric to discuss abortion and for co-founding the discredited anti-choice front group known as the Center for Medical Progress, was a vocal supporter of Moore’s campaign. He stood by the Alabama Republican amid allegations that Moore sexually abused a minor and behaved inappropriately with other young women.

Rusty Thomas, national director of Operation Save America—the group that made headlines this year when it spent a week protesting in front of Kentucky’s last abortion clinic—said the race may not be over. “Apparently, Alabama did not count all the votes, like the military vote that is traditionally Republican,” Thomas wrote in a Wednesday post to his Facebook page. “As a result, Roy Moore will not concede until there is a recount. This may not be over brethren.”

Thomas spoke on Moore’s behalf at a November press conference, telling the crowd that he continued to support the Republican “without hesitation” despite the flood of allegations against him.

Matt Trewhella, whose endorsement was touted on Moore’s campaign site, took to social media to encourage supporters not to give up the cause. “The Democrats and Republicans are all happy by the Potomac – Moore has lost and Bannon suffers a blow in his cause to destroy the GOP Establishment,” he wrote in a post to his Facebook page. “Business as usual in DC. – status quo maintained. Don’t lose your fight however – stay true to Christ and rally the lesser magistrates! Tomorrow’s another day.”

Trewhella signed a statement in the early 1990s saying the murder of an abortion care provider was “justifiable.” Though he later withdrew his name from the statement, a 1994 investigation by Newsweekdescribed Trewhella as “a mentor for potentially violent anti-abortion extremists.”

Cal Zastrow, an anti-choice activist connected to Operation Save America and co-founder of Personhood USA, claimed—without evidence—that voter fraud could have played a role in the results. “Please pray with us that all voter fraud will be exposed during the recount,” he wrote on his Facebook page. Voter fraud has been proven tonot be prevalent in the United States, and it is often used as a baseless excuse to erect barriers to the ballot box.

American Family Association Action and the Family Research Council, both of which supported Moore’s campaign, did not respond to Rewire’s requests for comment.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2017/12/13/abortion-rights-foes-flail-finger-point-mourn-roy-moore-falls-alabama/