Paraguay says a 10-year-old rape victim shouldn’t have an abortion

She’s just 10 years old, but in the eyes of the Paraguayan government she’s old enough to be a mother.

That she is still a child herself and fell pregnant after allegedly being raped by her stepfather are not considered valid reasons for abortion in this fiercely Roman Catholic country.

Nor, apparently, is the fact that her body may be too small to bear a child. 

The shocking case has drawn international condemnation and sparked efforts to pressure the government into allowing the girl to terminate her pregnancy. It's also triggered an emotional debate among Paraguayans about their country’s draconian laws that prohibit abortion under all circumstances, except when the mother’s life is in danger.

UN human rights experts issued a blistering statement on Monday criticizing Paraguay’s government for failing to protect the girl and for denying her “life-saving treatments,” including abortion:

“The Paraguayan authorities’ decision results in grave violations of the rights to life, to health, and to physical and mental integrity of the girl as well as her right to education, jeopardizing her economic and social opportunities,” the experts wrote.

“Despite requests made by the girl’s mother and medical experts to terminate this pregnancy which puts the girl’s life at risk, the State failed to take measures to protect the health as well as the physical and mental integrity and even the life of the 10-year old girl.”

The World Health Organization says child pregnancies are “extremely dangerous,” yet the Paraguayan government believes the girl is in good health.

In any case, they say, it’s too late to intervene. 

The 10-year-old’s plight has left people around the world shocked and abhorred.

But in Latin America and the Caribbean such a hardline stance is the norm, not the exception.

And Paraguay is not even the harshest.

In Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Suriname, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, abortion is illegal, with no exceptions. Women who terminate their pregnancies can — and do — receive multi-year jail sentences.

Abortion on demand is only available in Cuba, Guyana, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Mexico City (but not in the rest of Mexico, where many individual states have been toughening their abortion laws).

Elsewhere in the region access to abortion is tightly restricted.

Why Latin America has fallen behind most regions of the world on abortion laws is open to debate. Some point to the strong influence of the Catholic Church and the region’s macho culture for the lack of progress.  

What is clear is that anti-abortion laws have not resulted in fewer abortions. Quite the opposite. 

Latin America has the highest rate of abortions in the world at 32 per 1,000 women, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health organization based in the United States.

An estimated 95 percent of those abortions are unsafe, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,000 women a year and the hospitalization of more than one million due to complications from the clandestine procedures. 

The intense debate sparked by the tragic case of the 10-year-old girl in Paraguay could — hopefully — lead to change.