Defending Pregnant Immigrants Ought to Be Frequent Floor
This week, a coalition of pro-life organizations and thought leaders released an open letter calling on the Trump administration to reinstate and enforce federal protections for pregnant women in immigration custody. Pregnancy and early postpartum recovery are medical states that immigration detention facilities are not designed to safely accommodate, and federal policy should reflect that reality. The letter, signed by pro-lifers across the ideological and political spectrum, urges the administration to restore limits that for years governed when Immigration and Customs Enforcement could detain pregnant women.
Detaining pregnant women places both maternal and fetal health at risk, and in the vast majority of cases it is unnecessary when safer, more humane alternatives already exist. For much of the past decade, ICE policy acknowledged these realities. In 2016, the agency adopted a presumption of release for pregnant women unless extraordinary circumstances justified detention. That presumption was formally ended in late 2017. In July 2021, ICE issued new guidance stating that, absent narrow exceptions, the agency should not arrest or detain individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing.
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Although the 2021 guidance has not been formally rescinded, multiple reports indicate it is no longer being followed in practice. ICE has labeled its own materials describing pregnancy protections as “archived” and “not reflective of current practice.” The result has been a return to routine detention of pregnant women, even when no security threat exists.
The medical implications of this shift are well documented. National medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Family Physicians, have warned that detaining pregnant women places both women and their unborn children at serious risk. Detention facilities routinely lack obstetric specialists, continuity of prenatal care, appropriate nutrition, and timely access to emergency treatment. The stress of confinement itself is a known contributor to pregnancy complications and preterm birth. Medical advocacy groups and investigative reporting have documented miscarriages, stillbirths, delayed emergency care, and prolonged detention of women with high-risk pregnancies.
At a moment when immigration debates are often framed in absolutist terms, this issue offers an opportunity for rational consensus. For pro-lifers like me, these outcomes are obviously unacceptable. If unborn children have moral worth, then policies that foreseeably place them in danger demand scrutiny and reform. Protecting pregnant women in custody does not require agreement on abortion, border policy, or the broader structure of the immigration system. It requires only the shared view that the safety and health of pregnant women and unborn children are important.
The open letter released this week does not ask the administration to abandon immigration enforcement. It calls instead for clear and reasonable guidelines and for the use of alternatives that are already well established. Monitoring programs, regular check-ins, and community-based supervision are significantly less costly than detention and far more effective at safeguarding maternal and fetal health. These approaches allow the government to pursue immigration enforcement without imposing unnecessary medical risk.
This is an issue where I hope we can find common ground so we can do better for women and children. Reinstating protections for pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women would reflect sound medical judgment and a commitment to minimizing unnecessary harm.
LifeNews Note: Herb Geraghty is the Director of Communications at Secular Pro-Life, an anti-abortion advocacy organization run by atheists. Geraghty has an extensive history working in human rights movements with a particular focus on the right to life. This article does not necessarily rpresent the views of LifeNews.com.
