An Australian woman travelling through the US to house-sit in Canada was reportedly asked if she had an abortion, before being deported.
Madolline Gourley, a blogger known for travelling the world for catsitting, told The Guardian that she was transiting through the US on 30 June when she was held at the border.
The 31-year-old alleged that after being patted down, fingerprinted and photographed, one of the US border security officials asked her whether she was pregnant.
“She was walking me from one room to the next, and she asked the pregnancy question again,” Ms Gourley said. “I don’t know if she had forgotten, or she wanted to work out if I was lying or something. I said no, and she looked at me again and said, ‘Have you recently had an abortion?’
“I don’t know the thought process behind that … I just thought, ‘What’s the relevance of that to my situation?’”
Subsequently, she was informed that she would not be allowed in the country as she had breached the visa waiver programme.
A spokesperson for the US Customs and Border Protection told the outlet that the visa waiver programme prohibited applicants from engaging “in any type of employment or get compensation for services rendered”.
The spokesperson added that they “regret any inconvenience or unpleasantness” to passengers during the processing and that they “take allegations of unprofessional behaviour seriously”.
The Independent has contacted the US Customs and Border Protection for a comment.
Ms Gourley has toured across Australia and the US spending next to nothing by offering her housesitting services and looking after people’s pets while they’re away.
The enterprising writer from Brisbane, who also runs a blog titled One Cat at a Time, says she has saved around A$28,000 (£16,050) in accommodation costs to date by using the site TrustedHouseSitters.
“While house and catsitting for strangers has saved me thousands of dollars on accommodation-related expenses, I still need money to pay for things like my airfares to and from sits,” Ms Gourley had told The Independent last month.
“That means I spend the other, less exciting part of my life working a regular Monday to Friday job in Brisbane, Australia, putting money aside for my next adventure.”
She has raised a complaint about the US officers’ behaviour and the denial of entry to her local parliamentarian, Libby Watson-Brown, and Australia’s foreign affairs minister Penny Wong.
The minister acknowledged that the Australian government needed to do more to provide clear and accurate information to its citizens about visa waiver schemes, but added that Ms Gourley “deserves an apology from US Customs and Border Protection” along with a clarification “on how this impacts her future travel to the US”.
The situation has further raised eyebrows as it came just days after the US supreme court struck down Roe V Wade, which established a federal constitutional right to abortion.
Following demands from abortion rights advocates and members of Congress to bolster federal protections for abortion care, US president Joe Biden signed an executive order last week directing federal agencies to protect access to abortion.
The president cannot unilaterally restore Roe.
The US Senate failed to pass a measure that would codify those protections into law. Mr Biden has called on Americans to vote for officials who support abortion rights in elections this fall in the hopes of reviving the bill.
