Opinion: Ending birthright citizenship could be a public health disaster
Why this matters: health reporting relevant to everyday decisions and well-being.
Sometime before the end of June, the Supreme Court is expected to deliver its opinion in Trump v. Barbara, the case challenging President Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the United States. At stake is the long-standing interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which for more than a century has been understood and affirmed to mean that any child born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status, is a U.S. citizen (with a remarkably narrow exception carved out for the children of diplomats). Ending the guarantee of birthright citizenship would dramatically increase the size of the undocumented population in the U.S. and could invite a future executive to nullify the citizenship of countless American-born children of immigrants. It would also have stark consequences at the intersection of bioethics and public health.Read the rest…