Mr. Lloyd bases his role, a completely new one for a director of his office, on a policy adopted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in March that prohibits “any action that facilitates” abortion without “direction and approval from the director.” The prohibited actions include not only giving the minor access to the abortion itself, but also taking her to preliminary doctors’ appointments and to court to get judicial permission in lieu of permission from faraway parents.

The choice of the word “facilitates” in this document is not casual. It appears throughout the administration’s briefs in this case. “This Court has repeatedly made clear that the government generally need not facilitate abortions,” the solicitor general writes in his Supreme Court appeal. Among the precedents cited for the “need not facilitate” rule are those holding that the government need not pay for abortions for women who can’t afford one. But that is a far cry from Jane Doe’s situation. There was never a question of the government paying; the cost of the abortion was borne by a private fund.

The administration put forward its broad view of what it means by “need not facilitate” when it sought a stay of the first judicial order in this case, a decision by Judge Tanya Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, that the administration had to permit the abortion. Seeking immediate review of that order, the administration claimed that “the government’s refusal to facilitate Ms. Doe in obtaining an abortion places no obstacle in her path, much less a significant one, as is required to constitute an undue burden. The government is merely refusing to exercise its custodial responsibilities over unaccompanied minors by taking affirmative steps to proactively assist or enable her in such an endeavor, consistent with its legitimate interest in promoting fetal life and childbirth over abortion.”

That just about says it all. The administration can’t stop adult women from having abortions. It can’t even stop teenagers, who often have their parents’ permission or, failing that, the required permission from a judge. So the administration unleashes its anti-abortion fury on the most vulnerable among us, unaccompanied minors, pregnant and alone, who are here only because they had the gumption or desperation to flee something even worse. Suppose Jane Doe had not been able to get her abortion in time. She would soon be giving birth to a United States citizen. Then what? The administration doesn’t say.

What does it mean to “facilitate” an abortion? It seems to boil down to paperwork: According to one of the administration’s briefs, the government “would have to evaluate and sign approval documents for the procedure; arrange for transportation to the procedure or for transfer of custody to someone who would be authorized to take her; and monitor her health and care after the procedure.” Presumably, the government would make these arrangements joyously if the “procedure” at issue was childbirth. But when it comes to abortion, signing the forms is not only onerous; it also would make the government complicit, in its own eyes, with something it believes to be a grave wrong.

There was another recent case where signing a form was said to create complicity. That was the 2016 case in which religious employers challenged the Affordable Care Act’s requirement of free contraception as part of an employer’s health plan. Noel J. Francisco, now the solicitor general, argued in that case, Zubik v. Burwell, against the requirement on behalf of several clients, including the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington and an organization called Priests for Life. (The best-known plaintiff in that case, Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order that runs a network of nursing homes, was represented by another lawyer.) The religiously affiliated organizations sought the total exemption from the mandate that the Obama administration gave to actual churches. The question in the case became whether there was any accommodation that would satisfy the religious groups’ demand and still permit their female employees to obtain birth control on the same terms as other American women. In the end, the groups’ answer was no; even signing a form to opt out of the entire program was a step too far. (The Trump administration has ended the litigation by offering exemptions to employers with religious or just plain “moral” objections to birth control.)

Claims by private parties for not following laws that they believe would make them complicit with evil can be bold, as they were in the contraception case, though are hardly unprecedented. But the argument that the government itself is now making is something novel, a symptom of a world turned upside down. It is the government claiming a right not to “facilitate” a lawful procedure, not to be made complicit in what some politicians and federal bureaucrats regard as evil. It is the government itself claiming a right not to follow the law. The concept is head-spinning.