Sunday, May 12, 2019

Mother's Day for Very Young Mothers


Imagine Sally’s pregnancy begins to show by Christmas time. Would she be happy that by April, before school is out, she would deliver her first baby weighing 7 pounds? Sally is one of several young American mothers who did not have an abortion. According to her doctor, Sally was age 10 when she gave birth. Imagine celebrating mother's day at age 10.

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Changing Laws Affecting Mothers

In the U.S., 10-year old girls are in elementary school. I wonder how well elementary schools are prepared to help young mothers adjust to pregnancy and stay in school. I wonder how many churches and pregnancy centers help child mothers through pregnancy. I have not read much about prolife positions on the care of girl-mothers.

Recently, during the time of an average pregnancy, several American states have passed laws setting early restrictions on when a mother may legally end a pregnancy. It’s hard to keep up with the variations in language that permit abortions under certain conditions. Rumors abound. It is not surprising to learn that many women have questions (Shugerman, 2019).

An Alabama proposal debated last week prohibited doctors from aborting a fetus when it is “in utero.” The only proposed exception permitting a later abortion would be a serious risk to the mother’s health (Paul & Wax-Thibodeaux, 2019). Unlike other heartbeat laws, Alabama’s proposal did not include an exception for incest or rape. In case you are wondering, girls have delivered healthy babies. But there isn’t much to read about the mental health of these very young mothers.

On Facebook, conservative women and men see the restrictive abortion trend as progress toward a total ban on abortion in all 50 states. It is no secret that conservatives hope to undo the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which broadened laws permitting women to have an abortion.

So far, no states have technically banned abortion. Instead, they pose restrictions that would make it very difficult for a pregnant girl or woman to get a legal abortion. The punishment for an abortion appears to fall on the physicians rather than the women. Thus, it seems in these debates about laws, a woman is not a moral agent. It would seem a woman may mentally choose to have an abortion but may not legally obtain one if she waits too long or fails to comply with other rules governing her pregnancy.

Politically it makes sense to punish physicians rather than women. Perhaps it also makes political sense to make exceptions to an all-out ban on abortion in order to undo the horrors of rape and incest. But in other regions of the country, a complete ban on abortions might make political sense. By political sense I mean, the majority of voters in some states want a particular type of abortion law that is different from the laws in other states.

Now back to Sally

We usually think of teen girls when we think of young mothers. But, though rare, elementary school girls do get pregnant. The youngest and most famous young mother, Lina, was of kindergarten age (Yahoo, 2007). Presumably, girls will be having children as more and more laws approach an all out ban on abortion. It won’t matter to the lawmakers if the girls were raped by friends or relatives or strangers. It won’t matter to the lawmakers if the young parents were both children. Girls will be pregnant and will not be having an abortion.

We know girls will be delivering babies as they have done around the world for years. An unknown number of more girls will be pregnant when abortions are banned. Society has become more accepting of single teen mothers. But you don't hear much about girl mothers. An ethical society will need to change its institutions to respond to the needs of girl mothers in places where abortion is illegal. 

As far as biological maturity, it has been documented for years that girls begin puberty at ever earlier ages. According to Texas A&M, American girls got their period about age 16-17 just a 100 years ago. Currently, the average age is 12-13 with many having an earlier start, e.g., age 10. This age fits with the historical record of very young mothers—there’s a higher frequency of mothers at age 10 than for the younger years.

Changing Marriage and Relationship Patterns

Children can marry in many states. Between 2000 and 2010, about 248,000 American children got married. Most were girls and the youngest were 12 (McCoy, 2018). Thus, presumably, young mothers could be cared for by the fathers of their children, if those fathers had sufficient income to support a young family. This of course is theoretical. We know so many teen mothers are single. Despite the laws permitting child marriage, the average age of marriage has increased in the US. Recently, women were typically 27 and men 29 (Abadi, 2018). 

The bottom ethical line is, even if child marriage is legal, it is not a solution to the problem of very young mothers. And one must ask the ethical question: Is child marriage ethical? Can a child consent to marriage? Should parents have the right to consent to their children marrying at age 12 or whatever age? More importantly, does anyone think these young girls became pregnant by choice? Are they not victims of sexual assault?

Some single mothers are able to earn a living and care for their children. But it isn’t easy. Girl mothers are even more dependent on others than are 16-17-year-old mothers. The attitudes of parents and her local culture will be vital to the welfare of girl-mothers and their children.

Why Look at Extreme Cases?

If a governing group wishes to make laws consistent with ethical principles, then one must consider how such a law might affect people who are different in some important way to the average person governed by the law. 

Laws by their nature are coercive. Laws impose rules limiting the freedom of those governed by the law.

Ethical laws ought to consider morally relevant facts. Some elementary school age girls can and do get pregnant. They are victims of rape. Is it right for lawmakers to insist nine and ten year old girls to give birth?

So, who gets to make the decision for the care of these pregnant girls? How will the institutions of society support pregnant children at school, church, and in the community when girls must be pregnant for up to nine months?

Are sex education programs effective for girls who do not want to be pregnant in fourth or fifth grade? Can a girl really fend off a rapist? 

Are parents and law makers fully aware that most women and men have sex before they marry? And a significant number of people have sex before they are legally adults? Are decision-makers fully aware of how many girls and young teens are at risk of becoming pregnant as a result of sexual assault?

Do numbers even matter when a law is made? That is, shouldn't a law be written so that the lives of ten, one hundred, or a thousand lives are not harmed?

Adult women can vote and have a voice in decisions about laws that govern their reproductive rights. But who speaks for the girls?

If an unborn child is a person with the rights of a person, who protects the rights of that unborn person? What defines a person? Is a person a being with a heartbeat, a brainwave, a potential to live without a biological dependency on another human? Those are the decisions lawmakers have considered when writing laws limiting abortion.

When it comes to life and death decisions about people, it makes sense to think about end-of-life care as well as beginning-of-life care. If life is sacred, as is if often claimed, ethical people ought to be concerned about preserving life from conception to the grave. 

In all of these decisions, one ought to consider who is responsible for the lives at issue? Ethical decisions require an ethical decision-maker. If women are not permitted to make decisions about their pregnancy, then they are not considered moral agents. Instead, the lawmakers and the physicians become the de facto moral agents who decide life and death.

 If governing bodies do not trust women to make an ethical decision about their pregnancy, who will they trust to make an ethical decision about their pregnant girls? The governing body has assumed the moral authority and abbrogated any rights of parents.

If the unborn are truly persons, why not change birth certificates, elligbility for medical services, tax laws about counting dependents and so forth? Should insurance companies offer life insurance to pregnant girls and women in case of a miscarriage or still birth? Why isn't it common to hold funeral services when a woman has a miscarriage? I do not see much evidence that societies focused on forcing children to give birth cares much about those girls who have been raped.

Abortion Ethics

You might suspect that people of many religions have considered the ethical issues involved in abortion decisions. There really are many different cases that can challenge any ethical principles concerned with harm to mothers and unborn children as well as concerns about the rights of the unborn, mothers, and fathers. Laws without exceptions are simply stated and do not require moral judgment. Ethical decisions require wisdom. Ethical decisions may sometimes requuire people to make difficult choices. Ethically, one should err on the side of life, but one should not ignore the sacred lives of little girls who have become pregnant because of some rapist.

Extreme ethical positions can evoke disgust. 

Extreme ethical positions make the holders of such positions look like they don't care about people.  
Conservative Christians have made extreme pro-choice people look uncaring and immoral with pictures and videos showing the destruction of babies aborted near term. The images evoke disgust.

Liberal Christians are concerned about the lives of women destroyed by pregnancies due to brutal rapes. And conservative Christians don't seem to care about these women when they insist they deliver their rapist's child. The sexual assualt of children is disgusting. It ought to evoke an emotional response. Is it not equally disgusting to force little girls to give birth?



Examples of ethical thinking about life and abortion: Family Research Council, BBC, Focus on the Family,  MSNBC,


I am prolife. 
All lives ought to be sacred. 
Ethical leaders must consider the imact of laws on all persons.

Read more about abortion, birth control, and morality in


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Additional Notes.

The case about Sally is fictional but based on the facts that girls aged 10-11 do give birth to babies.

Less is known about early puberty in boys, but a similar decline in the onset of puberty is evident. There are theories about why this declining age of puberty has happened for girls and boys, but definitive answers are lacking.

Young fathers are more rare than young mothers. In 1998, Sean Stewart was permitted to miss school to be with his 16-year-old girlfriend when she delivered their child. He was 11 and she was 15 when she became pregnant (Watson-Smyth, 1998).

In 2010, a young couple, age 14, appeared to have community support according to the story by Blake in The Telegraph.


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