Child Mothers in Colombia
According to the Ministry of Health in Colombia, 5,804 girls under the age of 15 were mothers in 2017. In contrast, only 146 girls accessed legal abortion.
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February 13, 2019.
The new digital media of investigative journalism Mutante.org dedicated its first conversation to the problem of sexual violence that girls live in Colombia.
Thanks to a petition information that Mutante made to the Ministry of Health through the Queremos Datos platform, if was evidenced that 5,804 girls under 15 years were mothers during 2017. This number is contrasted with only 146 girls from up to 15 years old that were able to access a legal abortion under the causes established by Colombian law.
According to Mutante, all these girls had the right to voluntarily end their pregnancy, because technically, they were sexually abused, since the Colombian Penal Code prohibits any sexual relation with persons under 15 years old. And also the Sentence C-355 of 2006, that decriminalized abortion under three causes in Colombia, allows abortions when the pregnancy is the product of a rape.
See the full investigation here.
About the data:
Based on data provided by the Ministry of Health, Datasketch built the image of a girl, with blue dots representing the 5,804 girls underage who in 2017 were mothers, and the red dots representing the 146 legal abortions of girls from up to 15 years old during that year.
