A court in India is allowing a 10-year-old to get an abortion after the girl was raped and expected to give birth in four months.
A local district court made the decision Tuesday to allow the abortion after the girl was examined at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences located in the Rohtak district in the Indian state of Haryana, according to CNN.
The abortion request took place in district court because the girl was more than 20 weeks pregnant, CNN said. The country's Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act doesn't allow abortion after 20 weeks unless the life of the mother is at stake.
"The court has asked the doctors to terminate this pregnancy," Dr. S.K. Dhattarwal, head of the institute's forensic medicine department, told CNN. "We are examining the female to determine the best method for abortion. It will be carried out in the evening."
Agence France-Presse reported that the girl's stepfather has been arrested after being accused of repeatedly raping her. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Children in 2014 expressed concern over the level of sexual abuse against children in the country.
AFP said 2,199 rape cases were reported in 2015 just in the country's capital of New Delhi, an average of six assaults a day.
According to the Indian Express, the mother of the 10-year-old girl said that she wanted her husband free, even though he is accused of the rape.
"If my husband is jailed, where will I go?" the mother of the rape victim said, according to the Indian Express. "The girl's life is destroyed but what will happen to my other children? I need to think about their future, too."
The mother said her pregnant daughter was the second oldest of four children from her first husband who died, wrote the Indian Express. Her current husband, named Suresh, is her late first husband's brother.
"On the day he was arrested, Suresh apologized to me profusely and said 'Hit me with your slippers if I do this again,'" the mother said, according to the Indian Express. "I want him to be released and my daughter's child to be aborted."