11-year-old Argentinian girl gives birth after she was denied an abortion

An 11-year-old Argentinian girl has given birth via cesarean section after doctors refused to perform an abortion due to confusion over the country’s laws.

The girl requested an abortion after she was raped by her grandmother’s 65-year-old partner and became pregnant, according to the BBC.

{mosads}She told health authorities in the northern province of Tucumán that she wanted “this thing the old man put inside me taken out.”

Abortion is legal in Argentina in cases of rape or danger to the mother’s health, but officials were reportedly unable to determine who the girl’s legal guardian was in order for that person to provide consent for the procedure.

The girl had recently been placed under the care of her grandmother, but because of the rape, the grandmother had been stripped of her guardianship and could not provide the necessary consent, according to the report.

The girl’s mother supported her request, but officials did not recognize her consent, either, because the girl lived with her grandmother.

The 11-year-old’s request was granted after about five weeks of delays, by which point she was 23 weeks pregnant. But some doctors, citing personal beliefs, then refused to perform the abortion because she was too far along in the pregnancy, according to the BBC.

Doctors eventually performed a C-section, saying that an abortion would have been too risky. The baby was born alive but not expected to survive.

The girl’s case has reignited debate over Argentina’s abortion laws, which pro-choice activist groups have been pushing to loosen following a 2014 decision by the Argentine Senate to reject legalizing abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Human rights organization Amnesty International issued a statement on the birth, calling the situation akin to “torture.”

“Forcing an 11-year-old girl to have to resort to an emergency cesarean which could have been avoided is a cruel injustice that inflicts such psychological and physical harm on the child it could amount to torture under international law,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, said in the statement.