Bolivia: fate of 11-year-old girl raped by family member sparks abortion debate

The destiny of an 11-year-old miss who became large aft being raped by a household subordinate has unleashed a fierce statement betwixt quality rights activists and the Catholic religion successful Bolivia, arsenic spiritual groups question to unit her to implicit the gestation and springiness birth.

The miss was impregnated aft being repeatedly raped and suffering different intersexual maltreatment by the begetter of her stepfather successful the municipality of Yapacaní, successful Bolivia’s eastbound Santa Cruz region.

The miss was surviving with her sisters and 61-year-old step-grandfather, who is present successful jailhouse for the crime, due to the fact that her parents were successful La Paz working.

The lawsuit has thrown into crisp alleviation the gaping holes successful the state’s extortion for women and girls successful Bolivia which has 1 of highest levels of inter-familiar intersexual unit and maltreatment successful Latin America, and what immoderate activists telephone a culture of rape.

The involution of the Catholic religion is besides being severely questioned, aft spiritual groups contacted the parent of the unfortunate and persuaded her to reason the termination of the pregnancy, a determination which has prompted ineligible enactment by the Bolivian quality rights’ ombudsman’s office.

“The miss didn’t adjacent cognize what it meant to beryllium pregnant; she told her relative that she felt thing moving wrong her tummy. Her relative told her parent – the girl’s aunt – who reported it to the police,” said Ana Paola García, the enforcement manager of La Casa de la Mujer, a Bolivian women’s rights NGO.

The miss was taken to the Percy Boland Women’s infirmary successful the metropolis of Santa Cruz where, by law, arsenic an underage rape unfortunate she was owed to person the gestation terminated past Friday. A 2014 law ruling made interrupting a gestation ineligible successful the lawsuit of rape without the request to get a tribunal order, García said, arsenic had been required anterior to that.

But the child’s mother, accompanied by a pistillate claiming to beryllium a lawyer for the church, intervened, saying the miss had changed her mind, García said. The miss was removed from infirmary and taken to a centre for teen mothers.

“There is evidently manipulation by the Catholic religion which has practically kidnapped the miss and silenced the mother,” García said. “They are violating her quality rights.”

“She is being obliged to proceed with a gestation which puts her beingness astatine risk,” she added.

Susana Inch, a spokesperson for the Bolivian Bishops Conference, told section media connected Wednesday: “We person the ethical and ineligible work to support the beingness of the baby, some lives indispensable beryllium protected.”

In a connection the archdiocese of Santa Cruz said “one transgression does not lick different crime”, offering escaped lodging and attraction for the miss and the unborn child.

But Bolivia’s quality rights ombudswoman, Nadia Cruz, said her bureau would beryllium seeking transgression proceedings against the aesculapian unit astatine the hospital, the archdiocese of Santa Cruz and the parent of the miss for breach of work of attraction and quality trafficking for the intent of forced pregnancy.

She added her bureau had filed for precautionary measures earlier the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights successful the case.

“We repudiate and cull that the religion uses its power and powerfulness to meddle successful nationalist policies related to intersexual and reproductive rights oregon to instrumentality actions related to underage victims of intersexual violence,” Cruz said. “Bolivia is simply a secular state.”

In a statement, the United Nations successful Bolivia said that to “submit a insignificant to a forced gestation was classified arsenic torture”.

According to figures from the Casa de la Mujer, successful 2020 39,999 pregnancies of girls nether property 18 were reported successful Bolivia, meaning that astir 104 minors go large each time successful Bolivia, of whom an mean of 8 are nether 15 years of age.