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.
Her advocates with Jane’s Due Process in Texas knew whom to call for help — Amiri, a tireless, quick-thinking lawyer with a reputation as a fierce champion of women battling government restrictions on abortion and access to contraception.
“Ever since I was little, I had a streak in me that fought back against what was unfair, particularly when it came to girls being treated differently than boys,” she told STAT.
As an attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, she has a South Dakota law requiring women to visit a crisis pregnancy center before obtaining an abortion and an Alaska restricting Medicaid funding for abortion. She has sued the Obama administration over abortion and contraception access for immigrant teens. And she has played
