At the Casa Rosa Maria in Paraguay's capital, Asuncion, the kitchen is full of chattering girls preparing food to celebrate the 13th birthday of a new resident - a girl who is five months pregnant. Nine of them live at this spacious mother-and-baby home run by the local Catholic Church. It's a joyful place that echoes with the sound of teenage laughter, scampering toddlers and gurgling babies.
In the kitchen in a stripy jumper and jeans, rocking her hefty-looking one-year-old son on a hip that's hardly there, is Perla. She is 12. Perla was raped by her brother when she was 10, and became a mother at 11.
Perla's one of 200 girls who have passed through the doors of the Casa Rosa Maria, some as young as nine.
Earlier this year, this story made international headlines:
Paraguayan authorities have ruled out abortion for a pregnant 10-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by her stepfather, unless she develops complications that put her life in danger.
Despite a plea from the girl’s mother and an international outcry, senior medical officials in Asunción told the Guardian that more than 22 weeks into the pregnancy, there are no health risks that would allow doctors to circumvent the Catholic country’s stringent anti-abortion laws.
It must be noted that Paraguay is an economically impoverished country cursed with machismo, inequality. It suffered for decades under the brutal regime of Alfred S., whose name should be forgotten immediately:
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay’s dictator-in-chief between 1954 and 1989, was South America’s longest-lived Cold War tyrant. During his tenure, Paraguay transformed into a safe haven for Nazi war criminals. His brutal security services would reportedly record victims’ dying screams and send the tape to grieving relatives. Yet despite all this, Stroessner seemed terrified that people might one day forget his name. We know this because he plastered the thing absolutely everywhere.
More on Paraguay below:
In Paraguay, 23 out of 100 deaths of young women are the result of illegal abortions. Concerning this death rate, Paraguay has one of the highest in the region.
Which is what happens when abortion is illegal.
Abortion must be safe and legal and available.
Teen pregnancy, child pregnancy, is unhealthy:
Anemia, or low iron in the blood.
High blood pressure, which can cause health problems for the mother and baby. It can lead to preeclampsia, which causes excess swelling in the hands and feet and leads to organ damage if it is not treated.
Premature birth, when the baby is born earlier than it should be.
Low birth weight baby. When a baby is born very small (under 5.5 pounds) it has more risks for health problems.
Poor nutrition. Because teens’ bodies are still developing, they need to be especially careful to have a good diet while pregnant, putting on a healthy amount of weight by eating good foods, like whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and low fat meats and dairy products.
Eating disorders.
Depression. Pregnancy is a time of many complicated emotions, but especially when teens don't get good support they may feel alone and depressed.
A child's body, a teen's body, is not mature enough to deliver a baby normally. Paraguay's pregnant children who are forced to give birth, give birth via cesarean section when they have access to prenatal and obstetric care. Obstetric fistula is not common because of the cesarean surgery practiced in Paraguay but is commonly found on other continents, a topic to be explored later:
One of the populations most vulnerable to fistulas are young brides. Child marriage is a global problem with an estimated 14 million girls given out in marriage before they turn 18, some as young as 9. 14 of the 20 countries with the highest rate of child marriage are in Africa.
The toxic combination of a young girl having sex, getting pregnant and going through childbirth when her body is not developed enough accounts for at least 25% of known fistula cases.
You do not have to have a daughter to imagine the impact of child marriage. It cuts across countries, cultures, ethnicities and religions. These children are robbed of their childhood, denied their rights to health, education and security, trapping them in the vicious cycle of poverty. And yet these decisions to hand out girls in early marriage are mostly taken by those who should be responsible for protecting them – their own parents and guardians – sometimes in the name of tradition.
Tradition? Another word for patriarchy and inequality.