After the account of a 10-year-old Ohio girl crossing state lines to get an abortion drew national attention, some prominent abortion opponents suggested the child should have carried her pregnancies to term.
Those pushing for very young girls to carry pregnancies to term may not be aware of the toll of pregnancies and delivery on the body of a child.
Marie Bass Gomez is the senior nursing officer at the reproductive and child health clinic at the Bundung Maternal and Child Health Hospital inGambia.
Dr. Dyalchand has worked with pregnant adolescent girls in low-income communities in India for more than 40 years and said that the critical issue is that the child's pelvis is too small.
They have long labor, obstructed labor, the fetus bears down on the bladder and on the urethra, which can cause inflammation of the bladder and rectum, according to Dr. Dyalchand, who heads an organization called the Institute of Health Management
He said that it is apathetic for girls who are less than 15 years old. Girls under the age of 15 have higher morbidity and mortality than girls 16 to 19 and women 20 and above.
In the US, the phenomenon of young girls having babies is rare. According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 4,460 pregnancies among girls under the age of 15 in the last year for which data was available.
According to the World Health Organization, the leading cause of death for girls under the age of 19 is related to birth defects.
According to a study published in the Journal of Neonatal-PeriNatal Medicine, young maternal age is associated with an increased risk of maternal health problems.
Babies born to girls are more likely to be premature and have low birth weight according to Dr. Willibald Zeck.
While a 10-year-old in Ohio might have access to prenatal care and a cesarean section that would blunt the effects of obstructed labor, the experience of a young girl in India is the same. The only difference is because of access to better health care they may not have the same type of terrible outcomes. That doesn't mean that the girl's life isn't scarred.
Dr. Syed provides care to pregnant girls as young as 11 years old. He said that a hole between the wall of the bladder or rectum and the vagina is a source of enormous shame and humiliation, and can be prevented with good pre-Natal care.
He said that even good prenatal care can't prevent hypertension in young mothers.
A child of 10 years old is not supposed to be pregnant. She cannot deliver a child because she is a child and the mental torture she will go through is not measurable.
In the cases he has seen, early pregnancies affect the young mother's physical growth and mental development because many girls leave school and don't have normal social interaction with peers. Fetals grow until they surpass what a young mother's pelvis can deliver, even though anemic mothers struggle to carry the pregnancies.
The baby is usually dead after the labor is over. When the head collapses, the baby is delivered, according to one of South Asia's pre-eminent experts.
The girl has a hole between the wall of the bladder and the vagina. In 25% of cases, the labor will cause the girl to leak urine and feces.
If people know that they can get treatment, Dr. Syed will be able to fix the condition. It takes about five weeks for the bladder to heal and about four or five months for the rectal one.
Dr. Dyalchand started his career in public health at a small district hospital on the western coast of India. Two pregnant girls bled to death in his first week, one while in labor and the other at the entrance to the hospital. He began working with communities to convince them to delay the age of marriage for girls.
India has also been increasing abortion access. The procedure can be done up to 24 weeks of pregnancies.
Ms. Bass Gomez said that her clinic is able to give good care to pregnant girls, but that doesn't help the experience. She said that her clinic is for adults. She said that walking in equally pregnant is traumatizing for the child. The environment is not set for them. They are struggling. There's a lot of shame.
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