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28 August 2015

Rape, ignorance, repression: why early pregnancy is endemic in Guatemala

Lack of sex education and the unenlightened stance of the Catholic church have left young girls in Guatemala vulnerable to rape, abuse and early pregnanc.  At a hospital in northern Guatemala, Alicia is being prepped for a caesarean. She doesn’t know how old she is, and neither she nor her waiting parents have any idea what a C-section involves. Public records say she is 13. If that is correct, at 12 she became pregnant by a 22-year-old man.
Inside the operating room, the doctors play Christian music on a mobile phone. An hour later, a baby boy weighing roughly four and a half pounds is born and hurried into an incubator. The next few days will be critical.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/aug/26/guatemala-rape-early-pregnancy-sex-education-catholic-church