Pregnant 13-year-old Peruvian Rape Victim Denied Medical Treatment, Confined to Wheelchair [Video]

Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle says that teenagers who are raped should make lemonade out of lemons by bearing their attackers’ children. Angle is one of several senate candidates who do not believe that abortion should be legal under any circumstances, even in cases of rape or incest.

INTERVIEWER: What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let’s say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?

ANGLE: I think that two wrongs don’t make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I’ll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said ‘I know what you did thank you for saving my life.’ So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life. [Think Progress]

Angle is not the only Republican candidate to hold this extreme position. Senate candidates Ken Buck (Co), Christine O’Donnell (De), Rand Paul (Ky), and Joe Miller (Ak) have also pledged to oppose abortion across the board. RNC For Life has endorsed 63 house candidates who have pledged to oppose abortion without exceptions, a substantial increase over previous elections, according to the group

This video from the Center for Reproductive Rights offers a glimpse of a society where Angle’s beliefs have the force of law. The 5-minute film tells the story of “LC,” a young Peruvian who found herself pregnant at 13 after being raped by her neighbor. Abortion is illegal in Peru.

Distraught, LC tried to commit suicide by throwing herself off a building. She survived the fall, but when she was taken to hospital, doctors refused to operate on her because she was pregnant. Her family begged the doctors to perform an abortion so that she could have surgery that might have saved her from paralysis, but the doctors refused. The Peruvian Medical Association agreed that the procedure should have been allowed for health reasons, but the doctors didn’t see it that way. They waited for months until she miscarried. By then it was too late. She is confined to a wheelchair and has minimal use of her arms.

LC will never walk again, but she is determined to ensure that other Peruvian don’t suffer the same fate. The Center for Reproductive Rights is taking the government of Peru to court over LC’s case.

LC: I Have To Tell What Happened To Me from Center for Reproductive Rights on Vimeo.

[Photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt of Pink Sherbet Photography, Creative Commons.]