“Could you bear to stay a little longer?” This phrase was said to an 11-year-old girl who became pregnant after being a victim of rape. She spent more than a month in a shelter, under order from the Santa Catarina court, to prevent her from having an abortion – in Brazil, the procedure is permitted in cases of sexual violence and does not require judicial authorization. Last Tuesday (21), the child was allowed to return to his mother's house.
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Understand the case
A victim of sexual abuse, the child was just 10 years old when she went to a hospital with her mother to have an abortion. At the time, she was 22 weeks and two days pregnant. The procedure was denied by the medical team, who claimed it was only permitted up to 20 weeks according to hospital rules.
The repercussion of the case occurred with the publication of a exclusive report from The Intercept, which released images of a court hearing with the child and his mother. In the video, judge Joana Ribeiro Zimmer induces the girl to give up on abortion. “Instead of letting him die – because he’s already a baby, he’s already a child – instead of us taking him out of your belly and seeing him dying and in agony, that’s what happens, because Brazil doesn’t agree with euthanasia, Brazil doesn’t have it, it won’t give him medical care,” said the judge. In other excerpts, she asks if the child would like to choose a name for the baby and even suggests that it would be “happiness” for couples seeking adoption. The judge left the case after receiving a promotion.
On social media, the case reached the trending topics on Twitter and motivated a series of demonstrations by politicians, artists and the population in general.
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High fees
According to a data from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN body responsible for population issues, Latin America has higher rates of teenage pregnancy compared to the world average. On the other hand, Brazil has seen the number of mothers between 10 and 19 years old decrease in recent years. Since 2010, the reduction in registrations has been 31%, according to a survey by Live Birth Information System, from the Federal Government.
Curto Curatorship
- The case of Santa Catarina is no exception. The most recent edition of the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook indicates that children under 13 years of age represent more than 60% of rape victims. Read the Estadão report.
