For months Angelica Ramirez hoped against hope that the changes in her body were caused by the shock of the rape. Eventually, when she could fool herself no more, alone and frightened, she tried to induce an abortion.
"I thought if I don't eat, it will die. I thought if I do the exercises and take pills and special herbs I will abort the baby, but nothing worked. Nothing happened."
Desperate, she approached a doctor, who agreed to do the operation. But she could not afford his fee; so, with her mother's help, she left her small-town home to have the baby in a city orphanage, so that her father would not find out.
"I know it's not the child's fault, but every night I ask the baby why it had to be born, why I had to have it. That's why I want to give it up for adoption. That's why I don't want the baby ever to know that I am its mother," she said, a shy teenager shaking in a failed attempt to control her tears.
The taboo that led her to pretend her pregnancy was not happening has deterred politicians on all sides from touching the abortion issue.
Women's groups estimate that 850,000 Mexican women abort every year, and about 1,000 are thought to die from botched jobs. These statistics do not even recognise cases such as Angelica's.
But in the past few months Mexico has been taken by storm by a national debate on unwanted pregnancies and abortion which, although begun by the religious right - newly emboldened by its links to the president elect Vincente Fox's National Action party (Pan) - has given the pro-choice camp a public platform it was previously denied.
"We have the opportunity to do something different," said Ricardo Sheffield, one of the Pan deputies who passed an amendment to the penal code in the state of Guanajuato designed to make abortion, even in cases of rape, punishable with prison.
"The damage of rape can be repaired, but killing by abortion - there is no resolving that."
Rosario Taracena, an activist for reproductive rights, said the extreme right posed a very real threat, but the feminist movement had long been pushing for the chance to talk openly about abortion and the restrictive laws and cultural taboos which ensured that the most abortions were performed in secret.
The Guanajuato bill caused a furore, not only because rape is one of the very few conditions under which abortion is legal in all Mexican states but also because it brought to the surface the deep contradiction between Mexico's Catholic sensibilities and its strong anti-clerical tradition, which abhors mixing religion and politics.
It also came soon after the case of Paulina, a 13-year-old rape victim whose attempt to get a legal abortion was blocked by politicians, lawyers and doctors in the northern state of Baja California ,where the Pan is also very strong. The case was given extensive and sympathetic treatment by Mexico's main television network, Televisa.
It also deeply embarrassed Mr Fox. A previous governor of the particularly religious state, he had worked hard to distance himself from Pan's rightwing image. But his victory breathed new life into the fundamentalists in the party.
The new aggressiveness of the pro-lifers prompted left-leaning parties to pass liberalising amendments to the abortion laws of Mexico City and the state of Morelos. Although hardly radical, they indicated a readiness to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by the extreme right in Pan.
Under pressure to calm the situation, the governor of Guanajuato, a close associate of Mr Fox, vetoed the reform at the end of last month. But the state's deputies have vowed to raise the issue again at a later date.
"The debate has only just begun," s Mr Sheffield said. "Mr Fox says this will go no further, but he is not a congressman. We have been raised as opposition, and it is in our blood."
"It was to be expected that the religious right would do something like this," said Edgar Gonzalez, a researcher, who stressed that the Pan, founded in 1939, had its roots in the Cristera war 10 years earlier between a reactionary church and the new revolutionary anti-clerical state.
Pan has broadened its appeal over theyears, but Mr Gonzalez said the fundamentalists had remained, awaiting the right opportunity to push their agenda.
"There is nothing to indicate that they are going to give up so easily now,"he said
There is also nothing to suggest that those who want women to be free to chose abortion will simply accept a quiet return to the status quo.
"What we want is for the debate to continue until we get a national referendum," said Veronica Cruz, a leading Guanajuato feminist, encouraged but not satisfied by the veto of the rape reform bill.
Meanwhile nobody doubts that whatever the law says, women will seek out ways to abort. For those with money and contacts it can be as simple as a visit to a discrete doctor, but for many it is a matter of noxious concoctions and sharp objects.
And it is business as usual in Mexico City's Sonora market.
"How many weeks?" a vendor asked to gauge the required dose of a herbal remedy he promised would start the bleeding within five hours.
"I only sell to women who are up to three months late, after that it gets dangerous, but for enough money you can always get someone to help you out."
