This is a story with so many tragic layers that there’s
really nothing to report but the sad facts: An Idaho girl, just a child herself
at 10-years-old, delivered a six-pound baby by C-section. The alleged father, 37-year-old Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez, has been charged
with rape and is being held in county jail. The girl, who was 9-years-old when
she became pregnant, may have had a medical condition that caused her to have an
unusually early onset of puberty. Police only became aware of the situation after the girl went to a doctor's office for treatment the day before she gave birth. Very little information is being released about
the young mother, who is in state custody along with her baby.
Reading a story like this, I have to remind myself of the almost miraculous resiliency of the human spirit. Both the 10-year-old and her baby are in good health, and it is not naive to hope that they will one day lead healthy, happy lives.
In another sad twist to the story, Gutierrez-Juarez is a
suspected illegal immigrant, so that some Web commentators have seized on this
tragedy to call for tougher immigration laws. Whatever one’s beliefs on
legislating immigration, let’s hope that reason prevails in this case, and one
horrific event is not used to make blanket characterizations about the millions
of immigrants living peacefully in the U.S.
Photo: localnews8.com
