Peru allows 11-year-old's abortion after UN pressure
STORY: Peru has granted a rare exception to its restrictive abortion laws and allowed an 11-year-old girl to terminate a pregnancy, in a case that rights groups say highlights a lack of support for child victims of sexual abuse.
The girl has been publicly identified only by the name "Mila," and, according to a police report, was raped for years by her stepfather.
Earlier this month she approached a hospital in an area of the Amazon for an abortion, but was turned away.
Peru's reversal of that earlier denial came after the United Nations pressured authorities to intervene. Abortion is only legal there if the mother's life is endangered.
Susana Chavez is the director of a feminist NGO called PROMSEX:
"Mila is an 11-year-old girl who unfortunately lives in a situation of deep poverty, in one of the areas where there is the highest rate of pregnancies among girls, and where sexual violence is widely tolerated. Mila was subjected to rape since she was 7 years old, the authorities were aware that she was a child victim of inappropriate touching. However, they did not intervene in that family until years later, when Mila got pregnant."
"They wanted to force her to continue with the pregnancy because they told her this was her destiny and that abortion was dangerous."
Meanwhile authorities are searching for Mila's stepfather, who was arrested in July but later released for insufficient evidence.
That move was widely criticized and the Peruvian presidency ordered his immediate recapture. His whereabouts are unknown.
