A 13-year-old rape victim has been forced to give birth after being sexually assaulted due to Mississippi’s abortion ban.
The teen delivered a healthy baby boy just days ago after being sexually assaulted by a stranger who saw her playing in the front yard outside her home in the fall of 2022, according to TIME.
Following the brutal attack the girl became depressed and withdrawn, losing enthusiasm for the the activities that usually made her happy.
Her mother could tell something was wrong and eventually asked her daughter if she thought she might be pregnant. The mom said she had not yet told the child how babies are made, believing she was still too young.
A teen rape victim was forced to give birth after being sexually assaulted in the fall of 2022
Abortion rights supports hold signs outside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic in Jackson, Miss.
‘She just said, “It hurts,” the mom says. ‘She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t want to tell me.’
On January 11 this year, the young girl became so ill her mom took her to the Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale.
When her blood results came back, it was revealed she was around 10 or 11 weeks pregnant. The police were called as a precaution.
Had the discovery been seven months earlier, an abortion could have been possible.
Instead a ruling in June 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization stripped women of their constitutional right to abortion.
Dr. Erica Balthrop, the ob-gyn on call that day, remembers meeting the teen for the first time just moments after the family were told the news.
‘It was surreal for her,’ Balthrop recalls. ‘She just had no clue.’
An anti-abortion protestor moves a sign from outside at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization also known as the The Pink House
A couple of weeks later at a follow-up appointment, her mum asked if it would be possible to go through with an early termination. They were told they would need to travel to the nearest abortion provider, in Chicago.
The financial demands were too much for the mother, and there was no other choice but for the seventh-grader to have her child.
‘I wish she had just told me when it happened. We could have gotten Plan B or something,’ the mum says, talking about the emergency contraceptive.
‘That would have been that.’
For the few months, the family did what they could to hide the pregnancy from others. The teenager wore baggy clothes and her mum kept her away from ‘nosy people’.
Mississippi law states says abortion will be legal only if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger or if a pregnancy is caused by a rape reported to law enforcement. It does not have an exception for pregnancies caused by incest.
But cases continue to fall through the cracks, even when a police report is filed alleging rape.
The girl’s mother filed a complaint with the Clarksdale Police Department but an investigation progressed, despite suspicions on who the alleged offender may be.
Now that the baby, nicknamed Peanut, is born, the new mom is getting ready to go back to school with her three closest friends none the wiser.
‘It’s going to be a little private matter here,’ the mum says.
