Unspeakable Cruelty to Women [View All]

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The girl was 17. An age, in Peru, where it is not unusual to face a pregnancy without a way to assure that it will be a healthy one.

She discovered, about 12 weeks on, that the fetus was growing without a brain and with no chance of survival. There was a great chance that delivery would jeopardize her own health. The girl sought an abortion under Peru's restrictive laws, which can allow the procedure to protect the mother.

"This abortion could be legal in Peru, but the doctor said no," said Susana Chavez, a nurse and midwife by training and an activist, by choice, for the Peruvian feminist group Flora Tristan.

The baby was delivered, face first and with fluid where there should have been a brain. Hospital workers forced the girl to breast-feed the infant, with its shriveled body and distorted features, until death.

"Today this woman is still in psychiatric care," Chavez said in an interview.

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