Reproductive healthcare in immigration detention: The imperative of informed consent

Health care providers are trained to inform, counsel, and provide optimal care to patients, regardless of their setting or immigration status. A key element of this approach is providers’ obligation to ensure patients have sufficient information to safely make decisions in their own best interest and when treatment is selected, provide informed consent. In practice, particularly in constrained settings such as immigration detention facilities, safeguards for these critical patients’ rights are not always implemented. Contemporary U.S. abuses follow a long global history of racially motivated violations of marginalized women's reproductive health.