The Catholic Church’s commitment to the sanctity of human life extends beyond the issues most commonly associated with the pro-life movement. The Church’s teachings on human life, from its opposition to the death penalty and abortion to its defense of the rights of migrants and refugees, is grounded in respect for the dignity of the person. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church teaches, “The whole of the Church’s social doctrine, in fact, develops from the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of the human person demands protection at every stage and in every circumstance” (107). This vision, often described as the consistent life ethic, insists that the same principles that compel us to protect the unborn also compel us to protect the vulnerable, the displaced, and the detained.

One sign of this commitment is the Pontifical Academy for Life. Last week, Pope Leo signed new statutes for the Academy. Like the statutes signed by Pope Francis in 2016, the updated document lays out the structure of the Academy and most of the text is unchanged. The most significant addition was a new category of academician: “Supporters.” This category creates a role for individuals who support the mission of the Academy but lack formal academic qualifications.

The release of the statutes serves as a good reminder of the Academy’s purpose. It was first established in 1994 by Pope St. John Paul II “to study and provide information and training about the principal problems of law and biomedicine pertaining to the promotion and protection of life, especially in the direct relationship they have with Christian morality and the directives of the Church’s Magisterium.”

When Pope Francis updated the Academy’s statutes in 2016, he upheld the purpose of the Academy, to preserve and defend human life, but widened its scope:

It studies various matters dealing with care for the dignity of the human person at different stages of life, mutual respect between the sexes and generations; the defence of the dignity of each individual human being; and the promotion of a quality of human life that integrates material and spiritual values. It does so in the context of a genuine ‘human ecology’ that seeks to recover the original balance between the human person and the whole universe.

The new statutes approved by Pope Leo restate the purposes of the Academy as set forward by Pope Francis. The Academy’s mission reminds us that threats to human dignity often appear far from the settings where bioethical debates usually take place. In recent months, reports from the United States have drawn attention to the treatment of pregnant migrants in immigration detention — circumstances in which both mothers and their unborn children may face serious risks to their health and safety.

Last month, the Academy hosted a workshop to address the theme of “Healthcare for all: Sustainability and Equity.” During this event, Msgr. Renzo Pegoraro spoke about the five goals of a well-functioning healthcare system which include reduced disparities, particularly between rural and urban areas. He also explained that high-quality healthcare prioritizes children and ensures effective care for mothers and their infants.

Yet even as the Academy works to broaden the faithful’s understanding of life issues, reports in the United States have increasingly highlighted the failure of US immigration departments to protect the lives of mothers and children through access to quality healthcare. In fact, researchers have begun to apply a chilling term to the detention of pregnant migrants: “necropolitics.” Coined by political theorist Achille Mbembe, the term refers to political policies that are used to determine who lives and who is left to die. Jonathan Xavier Inda, a professor at University of Illinois Chicago, applied the term to the deaths of detained immigrants that result from “uncare,” stating, “the necropolitical nature of immigration detention is closely connected to the inadequate provision of health care.”

His words are a chilling commentary on the distance we must go to establish the culture of life that the Pontifical Academy for Life was formed to promote and defend.

In October of last year, The Guardian reported on a letter that detailed the medical neglect and maltreatment of pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

According to the policies in place at the time the letter was written, ICE should not have been detaining these women. A 2021 directive (which is no longer accessible on the ICE website) states that the government’s policy is not to “detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.” This directive further states that ICE should release on parole individuals who “have been medically certified as pregnant.”

Despite this directive, the letter described by The Guardian summarizes reports from “over a dozen women” who were held at two different detention centers (one in Louisiana and another in Georgia). It highlights the ordeals that these women have faced, including “shackling, the use of restraints, and solitary confinement; delayed and substandard prenatal care; denial of prenatal vitamins; inadequate food and water; medical care provided without informed consent; lack of interpretation and translation in medical encounters; and medical neglect leading to dangerous infection after miscarriage.”

In one instance, a woman was reportedly shackled while being transported via ambulance due to an active miscarriage, despite prohibitions against using restraints on women who are pregnant or in postpartum recovery. One woman, who reported living in the US for nearly a decade and complying with ICE supervision throughout that time, suffered a miscarriage after a month of detention. She was then held for an additional two months, during which she showed signs of infection. Despite requesting assistance and medical evaluation, she was deported to her country of origin where she had to seek medical treatment for what had, by this time, become a severe infection. Another woman became pregnant during a lawful stay in the US on a tourist visa. Her travel and identity documents were allegedly stolen and, while waiting for paper replacements from her home country’s embassy, she was detained by ICE and held for twenty weeks. This woman’s pregnancy was high-risk, but she and her similarly detained dormmates had to fight for her to receive basic prenatal care. When she was allowed to receive medical care, she was not provided with needed interpretative services and was unsure what was occurring. Additionally, during her detention, she witnessed a fellow detainee experience a stillbirth in the facility bathroom. The latter had been bleeding for three days and previously requested medical assistance.

A PBS News report on the same letter described a woman who said that she was shackled while being transported during pregnancy. The transport took five hours and required two flights. She experienced dizziness, nausea, and vaginal bleeding. She said that during her detention pregnant women were not provided special diets and called the food “horrible,” adding that detainees sometimes had to “beg” for water and toilet paper.

The experiences of incarceration, uncertainty, and medical neglect left these women justifiably fearful of the impact that their experiences would have on their unborn children. Unsurprisingly, many struggled with their own mental health as a result of their detention.

Their concerns for their babies are not irrational fears: studies show that, even without the trauma that these women have experienced, babies born to migrants have higher rates of preterm birth and congenital abnormalities as a result of limited prenatal care coupled with the physical and psychological stress experienced by these mothers. Additionally, migrant women are twice as likely to die from pregnancy and postpartum complications. Preeclampsia is a major cause of death among pregnant immigrants.

Most frequently, however, the maternal mortality faced by migrants is due to bleeding. Ximena Rojas, a midwife in Tijuana, Mexico explained, “Bleeding is kind of normal for every pregnancy, every birth. But for women under so much stress, so much trauma, so much malnutrition, a little bit of bleeding can lead to shock pretty fast … So we try not to let anyone bleed, not at all.”

On Tuesday of this week, NPR reported on an email to supervisors of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — the department that is in charge of minor migrants who lack or are separated from a guardian. The email stated that “as of today we should be placing any pregnant children into the San Benito program moving forward as directed by Director Salazar.” This means that all pregnant, unaccompanied minors are being sent to a single group shelter in South Texas that is not equipped to handle the high-risk pregnancies of teenagers and is geographically distant from appropriate medical care.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), teen pregnancies are classified as high-risk due to the increased risk of problems for both mothers and babies. Teen mothers are at higher risk of eclampsia, postpartum infections, and systemic infections. In the youngest teen mothers, structural immaturity can result in obstructed labor. All of these can be deadly.

The infants of minors are at greater risk of being born prematurely, having low birthweights, and experiencing “severe neonatal conditions.” This makes rapid access to specialized healthcare essential for any detention center that houses pregnant minors.

Despite the likelihood of these high-risk outcomes, the closest Level 4 NICU is located more than two hours away in Corpus Christi. There is a Level 3 NICU in a city near San Benito; however, while a Level 3 NICU can care for very premature infants, only Level 4 NICUs provide continuous care by pediatric specialists and subspecialists as well as surgeries for complex congenital issues.

Additionally, the nearest pediatric hospital to the San Benito detention center is South Texas Health System Children’s, which is forty minutes away. For more complex pediatric care, Texas Children’s Hospital is more than five hours away.

It is this location — distant from the care that its vulnerable detainees may require — that the US government has chosen to detain pregnant minors who are themselves pediatric patients. According to NPR, more than a dozen girls, some as young as 13 years old, have already been moved to the detention facility. At least half of their pregnancies are the result of rape.

Officials from the ORR — who spoke on condition of anonymity — said that the government’s decision was made so that the pregnant minors would be unable to access abortions (Texas’s abortion laws virtually eliminate abortions and have left doctors confused about the rare situations when a mother’s life-threatening condition may make an abortion legally permissible).

Former ORR official, Jonathan White, who ran the organization’s program for unaccompanied minors during Trump’s first term said, “This is 100% and exclusively about abortion.” The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, denies this.

Still, preventing minor immigrants from obtaining abortions has been a goal of the administration since Trump’s first term. In fact, one of their efforts resulted in a lawsuit.

A government that claims to defend unborn life must also ensure the safety and dignity of pregnant mothers and their children. When the “seamless garment” of the Church’s defense of life is torn — when protecting the unborn is separated from caring for vulnerable mothers — the culture of life the Church proclaims is undermined.

If concern for the sanctity of life guided these policies, adequate care for at-risk mothers and their unborn infants would have been a priority. Instead, ICE has created a situation about which Dr. Blair Cushing, who runs a women’s health clinic 45 minutes from the detention center, commented, “You couldn’t set up a worse scenario … I’m kind of blown away by the level of risk that they’re concentrating in this facility.”

More than thirty years after St. John Paul II established the Pontifical Academy for Life to promote and defend the dignity of every human person, the task remains the same. Building a culture of life means refusing to treat anyone as disposable — not the unborn child, not the migrant mother, and not those detained far from home. For Catholics, defending life means holding these truths together and remembering that every human life deserves protection and care.

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