A 10-YEAR-OLD girl has reportedly given birth to a baby boy after a 31-week pregnancy in Mexico.

BNO News reports that the girl, who is nearly 11, gave birth by Caesarean section yesterday after arriving at a hospital in the city of Puebla where she had previously been to seek help for problems associated with the pregnancy.

The baby boy weighed 3 pounds and 3 ounces and is said to be recovering from pneumonia at the hospital’s intensive care unit. The mother has returned home to recover from the Caesarean but is visiting daily to breastfeed the child.

The story has become a lightening rod in Mexico’s heated debate about abortion according to CNN after it was reported that the 10-year-old’s pregnancy was a result of her being raped by her stepfather who has been arrested.

Abortion is legal in Mexico’s capital city but illegal or severely restricted in most of the other states across the vast nation.

In the 10-year-old girl’s home state of Quintana Roo, abortion is allowed in cases of rape during the first 90 days but the girl was nearly a month past that limit when she sought assistance.

The girl is said to be in the custody of protective services in the state and is being monitored both physically and psychologically.

According to the New York Daily News it is not the first time a young girl has given birth in Mexico.

In August 2010, an 11 -year-old girl had a child two weeks premature after she was raped repeatedly by her father. Local laws permitted her from having an abortion as she was four months pregnant by the time she sought help.