Law on unborn children in Peru: More than 5,000 girls are forced to become mothers, how does this law violate the rights of minors?

Every March 25 since 2002 is the commemorative date of the day of the unborn child, since the promulgation of Law No. 27654, which was adopted that same year, with the purpose of protecting life from the mother's womb and the recognition of the rights of the unborn, however, there is also an obscure statistic: 5025 girls in Peru are forced to become mothers because of this law. Forced maternity hospitals and child and adolescent pregnancy have been urgent issues for decades in Peru, but the Congress of the Republic approved in the national interest that day this Wednesday.

“Plenary Congress approved with 77 votes in favor the 1992 Motion of my authorship that declares the commemoration of the “Day of the Unborn Child” of importance and national interest, meaning 'Unborn Children' as every human being from the moment of its conception,” wrote the project's promoter, Congressman Alejandro Muñante de Renovación Popular.

Although there is no exact figure in 2022, it is known that in Peru, as of 2020, the number of girls under ten years of age forced to become mothers tripled, a direct consequence of the spike in sexual violence during the pandemic.

The Live Birth Certificate Registration System (CNV), a platform of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) that records births attended in health establishments in the country and that in 2019 had registered only 9 births to mothers under ten years of age. However, this is an incomplete approach because it is not complemented by girls who had abortions or out-of-hospital births.

Minors who are sentenced to be mothers are described as torture by the United Nations Human Rights Council, in the report of the Special Rapporteur published on January 5, 2016.

In addition, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (Cladem) also mentions that forcing girls to become mothers is a form of torture.

“To force girls to carry a maternity hospital they did not want is to torture them to remember the violence they experienced. An unwanted pregnancy is being forced that generates trauma to them and that seriously affects their development,” the psychologist specializing in the care of cases of gender violence, Mariel Távara Arizmendi, told Wayka, in 2019.

During the introduction of the bill proposing to decriminalize abortion in cases of pregnancy as a result of rape, exposed by Congresswoman Ruth Luque last December, the NGO Manuela Ramos reported that in 2021 every week, 26 girls have a birth resulting from rape.

“Legal, safe and free abortion for women victims of sexual violence will give them the opportunity to choose freely, without beliefs that limit their right to decide and without risking their lives in clandestine abortions,” the feminist organization explained on its Twitter account.

For its part, the draft law submitted by the Juntos for Peru - JPP legislator recalled that “the State guarantees comprehensive sexual education in educational institutions of basic education at all levels and modalities, without discrimination, with special emphasis on the prevention of gender-based violence against women and child and adolescent pregnancy”.

THEY DON'T WANT BABIES

In 2021, a study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) reported that seven out of ten teenage mothers did not want to have a child, in addition to posing a risk to their physical and mental health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the second leading cause of death among young women between 15 and 19 years of age worldwide.

As a result of this premature pregnancy, many girls are forced to drop out of school, which affects eight out of ten children, estimates the Ministry of Education.

“It is something totally harmful to that girl's mental health and to her development: it takes her away from school, makes her a victim of stigma in her community and, if she manages to report, the family doesn't see her well because she is denouncing a man from her environment,” Efe Rossina Guerrero, Director of Programs at the Center of Promotion and Defense of Sexual and Reproductive Rights (Promsex).

The gynecologist-obstetrician Miguel Gutiérrez told the Wayka portal that it is necessary for abortion to be decriminalized in Peru on the grounds of sexual rape, which can only be applied if the slightest evidence of serious damage to his mental health.

“In Peru, therapeutic abortion is decriminalized, but abortion for rape is not decriminalized, nor is abortion decriminalized for malformations incompatible with life. These two become part of therapeutic abortion, when these acts of violence or malformations affect mental health in such a serious way that they harm their health. It would be good if that was decriminalized for its own cause, both rape and malformations incompatible with life”, he concluded.

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