This can easily be
done by raising the age of punishable intercourse, which is now
fixed at the absurd limit of ten years. Menstruation very seldom
appears in native girls before the completed age of twelve years,
and if the 'age of consent' were raised to that limit, it would
not interfere with the prejudices and customs which insist on
marriage before menstruation."
In 1816 some girls were admitted to the Paris Maternite as young
as thirteen, and during the Revolution several at eleven, and
even younger. Smith speaks of a legal case in which a girl,
eleven years old, being safely delivered of a living child,
charged her uncle with rape. Allen speaks of a girl who became
pregnant at twelve years and nine months, and was delivered of a
healthy, 9-pound boy before the physician's arrival; the placenta
came away afterward, and the mother made a speedy recovery. She
was thought to have had "dropsy of the abdomen," as the parents
had lost a girl of about the same age who was tapped for ascites.
The father of the child was a boy only fourteen years of age.
Marvelous to relate, there are on record several cases of twins
being born to a child mother. Kay reports a case of twins in a
girl of thirteen; Montgomery, at fourteen; and Meigs reports the
case of a young girl, of Spanish blood, at Maracaibo, who gave
birth to a child before she was twelve and to twins before
reaching fourteen years.
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