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December 25, 2009

Living with their choices Teenage sisters sought freedom in pregnancy, but one found confinement

NC Aizenman:

When the Marquez sisters set out to get pregnant, Edelmira was 14 and Angela was 15.

Having babies, the girls thought, would force their Salvadoran-born parents to stop trying to keep them and their teenage boyfriends apart.

Edelmira was the first to succeed, giving birth to a baby girl in the eighth grade. She regretted it almost immediately, and warned her sister not to get pregnant.

Angela, whose round, brown eyes and shy smile are so similar to Edelmira's they could almost be twins, stayed quiet.

"I didn't want her to know I was still trying," Angela recalls, sheepishly. "When I used to see my sister play with her baby, I was like, 'She's so cute; I want my own.' "

Related: Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 25, 2009 1:01 AM
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