The pregnant 14-year-old at the center of the latest legal battle over undocumented teenagers’ access to abortions has decided to not undergo the procedure and will instead have the baby, a judge said Thursday.The fight over abortion access for pregnant teens in federal custody has been playing out in court for months. Since October, the Trump administration has been fighting a lawsuit alleging that it refused to allow four teenagers in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) get abortions. (The ORR assumes responsibility for all minors who come to the United States without authorization and without a parent or guardian.) Scott Lloyd, the head of ORR and a longtime abortion opponent, says that teens in his agency’s care can’t get abortions without his personal approval, which he has declined to give: Between March and December 2017, records show, he refused to grant a single abortion request.But the 14-year-old in this case, who is referred to only as “Jane Doe” in court records, wasn’t a part of that lawsuit. And the question before the court wasn’t whether she could get an abortion, but whether she wanted one at all.Doe originally asked for an abortion shortly after entering the custody of the ORR in January, according to a ruling last week issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She also met with two lawyers, Rochelle and Miles Garza. The Garzas set a February hearing for Doe, so that she could meet with a judge and obtain permission to get an abortion without telling her parents.But Doe never showed up to the hearing. ORR later told the Garzas that Doe had decided to continue her pregnancy, giving them handwritten notes by Doe that backed up this claim. But the agency refused to allow the Garzas to meet with Doe to confirm that she had changed her mind, according to the ruling.Last week, a panel of Fifth Circuit judges ruled that the dispute could only be resolved by allowing Doe to meet with a judge to clarify her decision. In the majority opinion, the judges wrote, “If the court finds that Jane Doe does not wish to abort her pregnancy, the matter is concluded, and the district court should dismiss the case.”Doe met privately with U.S. District Judge Jose Rolando Olveras and said that she didn’t want an abortion, the judge said later in open court. It remains unclear if her case has actually been closed.Neither the Justice Department nor the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, which oversees ORR, immediately responded to a VICE News’ request for comment.
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