An 11 year old girl in the Northeast recently gave birth to a baby boy, according to the girl’s family.
“My daughter and baby are fine, and the baby is absolutely beautiful,” stated the girl’s mother.
The girl, 11 year old and her family are not being named in order to protect the girl’s privacy.
A recent report by the Guttmacher Institute said U.S. teen pregnancies were up 3 percent in 2006.
But of course, this case is not about a teenager, Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan, a leading high-risk obstetrician noted; it’s about a pre-teen, or child, who’s body is not built to carry a child yet.
“Her body is clearly not defined for pregnancy with its short stature,” Al-Khan said. “Her chest is not extensively developed for breast tissue, her bones aren’t quite fused, and once you expose a child this young to high amounts of progesterone and especially estrogen, there is controversy that it could halt her growth.” (more…)