Girl (10) gives birth

of Puebla, suffering from life-threatening complications in her 31-week pregnancy, including seizures.
She gave birth by Caesarean section to a boy weighing 3.3lbs at the Women’s Hospital in the city, 96km southeast of Mexico City.

Her premature son is now said to be in intensive care following a bout of pneumonia, but officials said his young mother visits the baby every day to breastfeed, according to the New York Daily News.
The paper said the hospital revealed the baby boy is in a good condition considering his premature birth and the mother is recovering well after first coming to the centre on October 22.
However, hospital director Rogelio Gonzalez told UpFrontNewswire that the birth had been reported to the state’s Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating whether the girl could have been raped and who the father is.

Mexican state laws prevent young mothers having abortions unless they can prove they were the victims of sexual assault.
The legal age of consent is 12 and women who have abortions in Puebla face a fine or prison sentence if they are unable to prove they were sexually abused. However, the laws are currently under review.

The shocking case is not the first of a young girl giving birth in Mexico.
In August last year, an 11-year-old known only as Amalia had a child two weeks prematurely after being raped repeatedly by her stepfather when she was 10-years-old.
When the girl’s mother discovered her daughter was pregnant, she had a nervous breakdown and demanded to know how it happened, said local aid workers.

Amalia told her mother she had been raped by her stepfather and the attack was immediately reported to the police.
Cancun had passed a law banning most elective abortions, but women’s rights groups claimed the girl wasn’t told by doctors that the new legislation allowed for rape victims to have abortions.

And in 1999, a 13-year-old rape victim in Baja California state became a cause celebre after medical authorities refused to give her the abortion she was entitled to by law. She later gave birth to the child. – Prensa Latina.