Back in May, I wrote an article about a 10-year-old rape victim from Rohtak town in Haryana state, India. (You can read the full article here.) The young girl had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and raped by her step-father and was told not to tell anyone about it. Fortunately, the young girl’s mother had a suspicion that she was pregnant and consequently took her to doctors. After the pregnancy was confirmed, the child told her mother about her sexual abuse, and the step-father was arrested after the mother lodged a police complaint, senior Rohtak police official Pankaj Nain told the BBC.
As a result of the gender imbalance in India, a law was created to limit the amount of female fetuses getting aborted. The law states that no fetuses are to be terminated after 20 weeks unless the woman’s life is in danger. However, India’s Supreme Court has received many petitions for an abortion from women who have been raped, but the decision has always been given to medical experts.
The young girl’s case, in particular, had created a lot of controversy. This is most notably because of the victim’s young age and the fact that the medical experts couldn’t say whether she was 19-weeks pregnant or 21-weeks pregnant because of the technology used not being able to give a fully accurate reading.
At the time of the story being released, we were led to believe that she would be granted permission to have an abortion, but word has recently come out that she has just given birth through caesarian section. It was said that on Thursday morning she gave birth to a baby that weighs in at 2.2Kg (4.8lb). Dr. Harish, who supervised the 16-member medical team who performed the procedure, said that the overall surgery lasted “90-105 minutes” and was “uneventful”.
The young girl is not aware that she has given birth and has the understanding that she had a tumor-like stone in her stomach that caused it to bulge outwards. Dr. Harish said that “she’s bound to find out at some point about it and then I don’t know how she or her parents will deal with it.” He also said that her parents refused the hospital’s offer to give the girl counseling. The child’s family have made the decision to have nothing to do with the newborn baby. The formalities surrounding the fact the family would have no ownership of the baby are being initiated on Friday 18th August for the baby to be handed over to the child welfare committee and once the baby is old enough they will be put up for adoption.
(Featured Image: Courtesy of Pixabay)
