Caption: In this photo provided on Friday Feb. 10, 2012 by World Press Photo, the 1st prize Contemporary Issues Stories category of the 2012 World Press Photo contest by Stephanie Sinclair, USA, VII Photo Agency for National Geographic magazine shows Tahani (in pink), who married her husband Majed when she was 6 and he was 25, posing for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah, Yemen, June 10, 2010. Nearly half of all women in Yemen were married as children. (AP Photo/Stephanie Sinclair, VII Photo Agency for National Geographic Magazine)
Do you know what happens to a girl who has a baby when she's 12, 13, 14, 15 and her body is still growing and not yet ready for childbirth?
(1) A girl's pelvic girdle isn't wide enough for childbirth. That means often times, after long (several days) and extremely painful labor contractions as the girl's uterus attemps to expel the fetus, she and the fetus die before it's ever born. If she does deliver the baby, it might be stillborn or severely brain-damaged due to oxygen cut-off during delivery. Often the girl experiences uncontrolled bleeding due to internal ruptures and dies from blood loss.
(2) Extremely young mothers have a higher risk of pregnancy-induced high blood pressure known as preeclampsia, and their babies are at risk for fetal growth restriction.
(3) If a young mother and the baby survive the birth, she may be plagued with "obstetric fistula." Even physically mature women often experience urinary incontinence for a time after giving birth, but it usually clears up as her body recovers from the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth and through special exercises designed to strengthen the pelvic girdle. In a young girl where those muscles have been stretched beyond their limit, or torn and not surgically repaired, this doesn't happen. Think of a rubberband that has lost its elasticity - that is what happens. If this happens to a girl (and it often does when the body is not mature enough to experience the rigors of childbirth) she will be plagued with health issues for the rest of her life -- if she isn't killed by infection.
Obstetric fistua has become something of a cause celebre in some African countries where westerners have gone in and made television specials on the subject, but in truth, any girl anywhere who is not physically mature enough to go through the rigors of carrying a fetus to term and then childbirth can experience obstetric fistua. Take a good hard look at the girls in the photo at the beginning of this posrt. Do either of them look old enough to be having sexual intercourse, let alone becoming pregnant and giving birth? Look at the expressions on their faces. Would you want YOUR eleven year old to look like that? These girls don't even have breasts yet.
Perverted, sick, evil. In the United States and most civilized countries around the world, these men would be jailed for years as child molesters. Sick societies and cultures condone such things. We are a very sick world, indeed.
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