13 and pregnant. Fortunately, she is not alone

Your father left you with your mother at an early age, in school you are doing well but you still have a few years to go before you are ready.

Your future plans? you are just beginning to think about that, why the rush-you have a whole life ahead of you. Your mom works her ass off 6 days a week to make all the ends meet so you can go to school and so you can do everything else you want to do as a 13-year-old girl. Then you find out you're pregnant and, if you survive, will be a mother at 14. (The odds of dying during pregnancy are 5x higher under 15 than someone 25).

Her mother works 6 days a week for about 250 euros a month plus some social security. She goes to school and finds the love of her life there. They have a great time together and probably because of the lack of preventive education and contraceptives in this country, one thing leads to another. Talking about it is taboo, so once the high word finally gets out it turns out to be three months down the road. With an angry father after you who would rather see you dead than alive, the most logical decision is to run away with your future husband who is two years older. Deciding not to want to be a mother yet is something you can't do emotionally, and besides, having an abortion isn't allowed either. But you are confident, you will be a wonderful mother.

Abortion is only allowed if the mother's life is in danger or if the child is deformed, this requires a judge's approval, which is a long bureaucratic process in which by the time a decision is made it is often already too late. In addition, it is not accepted by the church, so if you already find a judge you can forget about "the support" of the church afterwards.

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of teenage pregnancies in Ecuador increased by over 70%. The only luck we can talk about is that the child was conceived in some kind of love, as 1 in 4 women in Ecuador become victims of sexual violence.

Many teenage mothers have no partner and raise the child on their own; it looks like this daughter will follow the path of her single mother.

She is fortunately not alone in her struggle. Nearly 40% of girls in Ecuador under 20 are mothers or pregnant. Among girls with no education, this number is even alarmingly higher.