A nine-year-old Mexican girl has given birth and authorities are looking for the presumed father, who is 17, officials said on Wednesday.
The girl, identified as Dafne, gave birth by Cesarean section to a baby girl weighing 2.7kg and measuring 50cm on Jan. 27 in a hospital in the western state of Jalisco.
The girl was not seen by doctors during her pregnancy and was almost in labor when she arrived at the hospital, said Enrique Rabago, director of the Occidente General Hospital where the child gave birth in the town of Zapopan.
“It is dismaying that a young girl became pregnant. You shouldn’t be pregnant at this age,” Rabago told a news conference.
A Caesarean section was carried out because it was safer for the mother and baby, he said.
The two were released in good condition and they will have an extensive follow-up in the coming days due to the mother’s age.
The hospital notified the authorities of the birth.
Sources in the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said that the girl declared that she had consensual sex.
The girl and the teenager were a couple, the source said.
The boy offered that the girl live with him when he found out she was pregnant, but she refused.
However, Jorge Villasenor, an official at the prosecutor’s office, described the encounter as a case of rape or child abuse.
“We are looking for the young man to get his story because she does not understand what has happened. This is a rape or child sex abuse case,” he said on Tuesday.
Dafne’s mother said the girl was eight when she became pregnant.
“The father is 17, but we have not found him, since he ran away,” the mother told reporters.
A source close to the investigation said Dafne comes from a large family in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, a village about 30km from Guadalajara.
“There are 11 siblings. Apparently their parents are separated and there was little care by the mother with so many children,” the source said.
Each year, 480,000 girls between the ages of 14 and 18 give birth in Mexico, according to the health ministry.
“There are pregnancies among teenagers, but girls between 10 and 12 years old are exceptions and most of the time it is due to a rape,” said Antonio Flores Villalon, a reproductive health specialist in Mexico City.
“Girls are still growing at that age. They are physically immature, and this puts them at higher risk,” he said. “This is the case for all minors who are under 18, but when they are under 15, the risks increase.”
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS