WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?!?!?!?

To all who is reading this,

It's been a while since I've written to you (school and life has that darn tendency to keep me preoccupied). But I had to take a break from life to talk you about something I just found out about in the news today.

I turned on my laptop with the intention to watch a random documentary on NetFlix when one of the MSN News applications popped up. Now, there's usually nothing worth reading on MSN News at first glance on this application (there's only so many times I can read about Britney Murphy, her death and her shifty husband from the UK). However, the headline "11-Year-Old Gives Birth to Baby in the Northeast" caught my eye and I immediately clicked on the link.

According to the Fox News.com story, an unidentified 11-year-old girl gave birth to a healthy baby boy in a Northeastern hospital. The mother seemed to be beaming with joy when she tells the reporter "My daughter and (her) baby are fine, and the baby is absolutely beautiful." Wait a minute. That's all she can say about what just happened here? That her daughter is fine, the baby is fine and he's beautiful? I understand that he may be cute and all, but when I read this story, all I could think was "Who and where is this baby's father? And why is this girl even pregnant?"

What's even more disturbing is that she is not an isolated case! In 2008, a 10-year-old girl gave birth in St. Anthony, Idaho after being raped by then 37-year-old Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez when she was 9. In Northeast China, a 9-year-old girl gave birth to a baby boy and the father has not been found. In Bulgaria, an 11-year-old goes into labor at her wedding and the baby's father (who's 19) is going to jail because under Bulgarian law, the age of consent is 15! And this man said that he fell in love with her at first sight and that he didn't know she was underage ("underage" in the eyes of the law, mind you). What kills me the most is that these girls are not even the youngest. The youngest mother documented was a 6-year-old in Peru; she gave birth to a baby boy in 1936.

Stories like this are more and more profound and disturbing. I understand that their bodies can't handle the weight of a child or that being pregnant can cause a pre-teen physical harm because her frame is too premature. I get that. But none of these articles--with the exception of one-- addresses the issues at large. Why and how is this happening? Why and how are these baby girls getting pregnant? Why is nothing being done about it? Where are the mothers when this is going on? It bothers me that the mother of the 11-year-old in the Northeast isn't tearing up that entire town trying to find the man or young boy who did this to her baby. And I know that there are young girls who are 11 going on 24, that there could be a possibility that this 11-year-old got herself in a hot mess, but that's few and far between.

Half of the girls I read about were either raped or molested by an older man. And the media is not addressing this. Her age is the only focus and the fact that she was violated disappears into the shadows somehow. These young girls will never be the same. They're psychologically changed and their lives altered--especially if they were sexually assaulted. I'm writing this because this is the topic no one wants to touch or talk about. This is not just a women's rights issue that can be overlooked. This is a world issue because it can happen to your daughter, niece, sister or that of close friend's. This is what's happening to young girls here in America and beyond, yet nothing is being done to protect these girls nor is no one being taken to task.

Where are the stricter sex offender laws? Where are the activists that should be speaking up and shining light on this issue? But, most of all, WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE??? The bodies of these girls are being taken hostage by selfish men engaging in inappropriate behavior and little to nothing is being done about it. This can not go unaddressed any longer. Something has to be done because--as I said before--the issue of rape and pre-teen pregnancy affects everyone, not just a few.

And that's enough from the Unknown Planet.