A 13-year-old girl who just gave birth — after being denied an abortion under Mississippi’s ban — is about to start seventh grade.
The girl, who Time called Ashley as a pseudonym, was raped in the fall of 2022 by a stranger in the yard outside of her home after he grabbed her and covered her mouth, the outlet reported.
Ashley used to love being outside, especially to make TikToks, but after that fall, it became hard for her to want to leave her bedroom. She started complaining to her mother about not feeling well.
“She just said, ‘It hurts,’” her mother, dubbed Regina, recalled to the outlet. “She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t want to tell me.”
Regina even said she asked Ashley if she thought she was pregnant—with the caveat that Regina had never had the conversation with Ashley about how one could even become pregnant. “They need to be kids,” Regina reflected to Time.
By 11 January, the teen started throwing up so much that it prompted Regina to take her to the emergency room. Blood tests indicated that Ashley was pregnant; that’s how Regina found out.
The on-call gynecologist determined Ashley was 10 or 11 weeks along. She recalled to Time: “It was surreal for her…She just had no clue.”
A week later at a follow-up appointment, the mother asked the doctor if there was any way to terminate the pregnancy; but in Mississippi, on 27 July 2022, the state’s trigger ban went into effect, meaning all abortions, except to save the life of the pregnant person or in the cases of rape or incest that were reported to law enforcement, were prohibited.
Shortly after discovering that her daughter had been raped, the outlet said, Regina filed a complaint with the police, but the investigation went nowhere. Authorities confirmed to Time that no arrests had been made in the case. Since the investigation is incomplete, police have not publicly confirmed that they believe Ashley’s pregnancy resulted from the rape.
As the state’s last abortion provider shuttered in July 2022, following the trigger ban going into effect, the gynecologist told Regina that the closest abortion provider would be Chicago — which isn’t actually that close. The teen’s mother considered it, the outlet reported, but after calculating the price of the abortion, travel costs, and factoring in the fact that she would have to take off work, she decided against it. “I don’t have the funds for all this,” Regina told the outlet.
So, the 13-year-old had no choice but to carry the baby.
But Mississippi is a particularly risky place to have a child under any circumstance, and especially so under Ashley’s circumstances.
According to KFF, Mississippi has the second-highest maternal-mortality rate in the nation—Arkansas, its neighbor, is the first. A study also showed that in the state, when compared to white mothers, Black mothers are four times more likely to die from reasons related to pregnancy.
Still, the months went on and Ashley’s stomach grew as she finished sixth grade from her computer. “We’ve been keeping it quiet, because people judge wrong when they don’t know what’s going on,” Regina told Time. She’s been trying to keep Ashley away from “nosy people.” Regina even said that her family is unaware of the pregnancy: “It’s going to be a little private matter here.”
Ashley delivered the baby over the weekend. When asked how it went she said succinctly: “Painful.” Even before the rape, Ashley had never talked much, but after, she became almost mute, her mother told the outlet.
Regina explained to Time that the police told her that she needed to bring DNA from the baby after the birth. Three days later, the investigators still hadn’t collected a DNA sample. When Time started asking around, the publication noted, the investigators cooperated.
Her mother is trying to arrange a plan with the school so that her 13-year-old can start seventh grade from home until she feels ready to face that environment again.
When the outlet asked if Ashley wanted to say anything to other girls the teenage mother said, “Be careful when you go outside. And stay safe.”
