In early September, a 17-year-old girl from Central America was apprehended trying cross the border between the United States and Mexico. After being taken to a shelter for unaccompanied minors in South Texas to await immigration proceedings, she learned she was pregnant. The girl, referred to as Jane Doe in court filings, was adamant that she wanted an abortion. Because of Texas’ parental consent law, she needed to go to court to get a judge’s permission, which she did with help from Jane’s Due Process, a nonprofit legal organization that provides representation to pregnant minors in Texas. Jane’s Due Process collected money for the procedure from local abortion funds. It was scheduled for Sept. 28, near the end of Doe’s first trimester.

Then the Trump administration stepped in. Repaying his loyal supporters on the religious right, Donald Trump has given federal appointments to a number of anti-abortion activists. They’ve been working quietly to dismantle access to reproductive health care while the country is distracted by the president’s pyrotechnic outrages. For almost a month, some of these Trump appointees have been waging a crusade to force the young woman, whose future in this country is extremely uncertain, to carry her pregnancy to term. Their standoff shows us the real-world consequences of this administration’s radical disregard for women’s autonomy.

E. Scott Lloyd had little professional experience with refugees when Trump put him in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, in March. He did, however, have a long history of anti-abortion activism, and had written several articles decrying birth control. (One piece was subtitled, “Why You Can’t Be Pro-Life and Pro-Contraception.”)

At O.R.R., which operates the shelters that house unaccompanied minors like Doe, Lloyd was given authority over uniquely vulnerable pregnant girls. Experts estimate that around 60 percent of female migrants have been raped. Brigitte Amiri of the A.C.L.U., the lead attorney on Doe’s case, told me that at any one time, several hundred to a thousand pregnant unaccompanied minors are in U.S. custody. Under Lloyd, O.R.R. has banned shelters from helping any of these girls get abortions, instead mandating that they receive “life-affirming options counseling.”