The following article by Kathryn Rubino was posted on the AbovetheLaw.com website August 24, 2018:
This essay compares abortion to the Holocaust — and concludes freedom of choice is worse.
You may not know Scott Lloyd’s name but as head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, he has a lot of authority over minor migrants in federal custody. And he has used that power to wage his own personal war against reproductive freedom, a battle that began after he paid for his former girlfriend to have an abortion. Now a vocal anti-choice advocate, he has personally intervened to stop migrants in federal custody — including at least one rape victim — from accessing a choice protected (at least for now) by the Constitution, a choice he himself made as a young man.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement acts as the legal guardian to underaged migrants in federal custody. In his role, Lloyd has radically shifted the policy under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama to allow teenagers in cusotdy to receive abortions provided they had private funding for the procedure. Now, Lloyd demands direct approval before any person under his authority is able to access an abortion, and according to a 2017 deposition, Lloyd has never approved such a request. In a chilling expose on Lloyd, Mother Jones documents the way Lloyd has handled such requests:
In one case before Lloyd was formally ORR’s director, a shelter halted a medication abortion halfway through at the agency’s request while Lloyd conferred with colleagues about deploying a scientifically unproven method to, as Lloyd recounted in a deposition on the case, “reverse” the abortion to “save the life of the baby.” (After being taken to an emergency room at the direction of Lloyd and another staffer to check for a fetal heartbeat, the girl received her second dose.) In another, he ordered a pregnant girl otherwise ready for release be held until she received anti-abortion counseling. In yet another case, he denied a pregnant rape survivor who had threatened to hurt herself if forced to deliver, stymieing her quest for an abortion until a federal judge intervened. Lloyd personally travelled to see one young woman in ORR custody to try to dissuade her from having an abortion, and he delivered a similar message to another young woman by phone.