Updated, 1:54 p.m., May 2: To include comment from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

AUSTIN — Members of Congress are pushing back after shelters across the country were instructed to share a controversial Texas brochure about abortion with the immigrant children in their care.

In an April 20 email, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, directed its shelters to provide minors in their custody with "A Woman's Right to Know." Texas' health department created the booklet, which abortion providers are required to give patients 24 hours before the procedure.

It outlines gestational stages, abortion risks and alternative services such as adoption. The booklet was revised in December 2016 to include research linking abortions to breast cancer, which has been refuted.

Four members of Congress objected Monday to the "forced dissemination of a highly deceptive anti-abortion brochure."

Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and California Democrats Zoe Lofgren and Barbara Lee said in a joint statement that sharing the Texas brochure nationwide would be lying to children in federal custody because medical experts dispute some of the risks it associates with abortion, and because some of the information is specific to Texas.

For example, not all states require a sonogram and a 24-hour waiting period before a woman can obtain an abortion.

They called for the removal of Office of Refugee Resettlement director Scott Lloyd for his "unhinged and unethical rules and procedures."

"If it were not enough to deny these women their constitutional rights, to obsessively track their reproductive cycles with spreadsheets and daily updates, to pressure and coerce them at their most vulnerable moment, Mr. Lloyd has now made the caregivers of these young women — those to whom they look for support and nurturing — complicit in lying and spreading misinformation about their reproductive health," they said.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement said in a prepared statement that it is "committed to providing all unaccompanied alien children in our care with information options that will assist them in making well-informed decisions on various matters."

The office gives "updated and timely guidance" to its providers regularly, the agency added.

U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, said Tuesday that the agency should stop distributing the pamphlet immediately.

"Refugees are among the most vulnerable people in our country's protection, and I am concerned that their treatment is less than fair," she said in an email. "All women, especially those in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, should be afforded the right to make deeply personal healthcare choices without fear of manipulation or interference."

Alexis Cole, the policy director of the sexual and reproductive justice group Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, said the Trump administration is turning the Department of Health and Human Services into a "fake health center," because the pamphlet contains inaccurate information.

"This follows Scott Lloyd's personal anti-abortion crusade, and it's getting in the way of critical health care that immigrants in his custody need," she said. "They deserve the whole spectrum of health care, including abortion, but instead they're getting lies from the government."

She echoed the lawmakers' call to fire Lloyd.

"These policies are cruel," she said. "The Office of Refugee Resettlement is within Health and Human Services, because they are tasked with ensuring the health and safety of these young immigrants while in their custody. Scott Lloyd is not doing that because he is keeping critical health care from them instead. He should be fired for not doing his job."

The Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit ethics watchdog group, has asked the inspector general of the health department to investigate Lloyd, pointing to instances in which he tried to dissuade minors in his custody from getting an abortion.

Jane Doe, an unaccompanied immigrant minor who successfully obtained an abortion last year in Texas after being blocked from doing so while in federal custody, has also sued Lloyd for punitive damages.