The right’s pro-life hypocrisy: Pregnant women face harm in ICE custody | Opinion

Cary López Alvarado should have been resting. One week from her due date, she should have been counting down the days with equal parts exhaustion and joy.

Instead, on June 8, she was shoved to the ground and shackled in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Hawthorne. A U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, she was held for nearly eight hours before being hospitalized with stomach pain. ICE agents alleged she was obstructing their access to two undocumented immigrants in a public parking lot, one of them her boyfriend.

There’s a quiet violence in how ordinary this has become. A technical violation — no threat to public safety, no criminal record otherwise — somehow became enough to justify brute force. López Alvarado’s story joins others: pregnant women pulled from cars, cuffed on asphalt and pushed onto the ground. These moments don’t just reflect a lack of trauma-informed training among agents who could have made a conscious choice to de-escalate the situation, they suggest something more deliberate: the rescission of ICE’s own 2021 11032.4 directive, meant to shield pregnant people from exactly this kind of harm.

What frustrates me most, however, is a deeper hypocrisy in the moral fabric of the political right, especially those who claim to be “pro-life.” I am disappointed in their severely myopic definition of the phrase, their selective drawing from conservative theology to protect only the fetuses deemed to be future children of white American citizens, while permitting violence to mothers and children who do not visually check said boxes.

To be pro-life means to stand for the right to life; it is a conviction in the inherent dignity and consistent worth of all human beings. It means advocating for lives of safety: in immigration, in our daily lives and, most directly for me, as a medical student and future physician, in health care.

An unborn child’s worth should not disappear the moment their mother enters a detention center or is perceived by ICE as potentially undocumented. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the detention of pregnant women rose by 52% after an Obama-era policy that generally directed immigration officials to release pregnant women from federal custody was rolled back.

Advocacy groups have long documented the inadequate medical care and dangerous conditions faced by detained women, leading to irreversible psychological trauma, physical harm and even miscarriages. Perinatal mood disorders, such as maternal depression, have been linked to hypertension, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. For pregnant undocumented women, who already have baseline trauma from arduous immigration journeys where rape and disease are common, incarceration and the constant fear of deportation can serve as powerful stressors, contributing to a heightened risk of cardiovascular complications and, possibly, premature births.

Along the border, immigration holding cells, colloquially referred to by migrants as hieleras or “freezers,” often lack basic sleeping accommodations, showers and hygienic products like soap. Migrants spend up to several nights in congested quarters where infections spread quickly.

For these women, it seems that their lives — and the lives of their children — are conditional.

I chose to become a physician because there is relief in knowing the field of medicine endures on treating every human, regardless of their their past, politics or papers. Illness and death are universal, and in their universality, there is fairness. This vulnerability connects us far more than our ideologies divide us: I may never know whether my patient voted to build a wall or supported LBGTQ+ rights, and I also do not wish to know.

What I owe, to myself and others, is to defend life with integrity. When advocacy on behalf of a patient falls short, the opposing party must be held accountable — whether it’s myself, a colleague or a politician.

López Alvarado ended up giving birth to a healthy baby girl, and the family has set up a GoFundMe to help cover medical costs and child care. Her boyfriend remains in detention out of state, unable to help with raising the child.

Clarity doesn’t come from choosing sides — it comes from choosing people. In every room, the fundamental respect of personhood — not politics — must lead. We are bound to complex social systems where race, socioeconomics and sex will always be relevant.

Life does not begin and end in a womb. It is lived along borders where families are being torn apart; in mothers who have miscarried in detainment centers whose prayers say: “When I die, bury me in comfy clothes and make sure my shoes are tied tight, because I have a long overdue play date with a little child.” When you hear someone is undocumented, let your first response be humanity, not fear or violence.

There is enough space for all of us to win, even in a nation as broken as ours.

This story was originally published July 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "The right’s pro-life hypocrisy: Pregnant women face harm in ICE custody | Opinion."