What do you like to do when you're out of school?

Get on my phone. Gooter stop.

Tiktok.

Ashley is everything you think a typical seventh-grader would be. But not everything is as it seems. At just 13 years old, Ashley became a mom to a little baby boy nicknamed Peanut. They've asked us not to show their faces or use their real names.

Tell me about what the last year has been like for you.

Kind of good, but not that good, though.

Perhaps the understatement of the year, if you ask her mother, who found out her daughter was pregnant by rape.

Probably when the nurse came in, the police came in. I'm like, What the hell is going on? What is going on?

As a mom, when you're listening to your daughter, describe at 12 years old that she was raped. Did you think that there would be an option for you in this state?

Yes. A rape should be like, you automatically, you can have an abortion.

You see this timid little girl. I mean, she's literally a little girl, and she was like a deer in the headlights. She had no idea what was going on.

This young family story now center stage in the raging debate after the overturning of Roe versus Wade. Mississippi has banned abortion, but does allow it in cases of rape. So by all the rules, Ashley should have qualified for one. But here she is with an eight-month-old baby. Why? As states keep passing new abortion restrictions, rape victims are caught in a web of conflicting laws and confusion, left asking the question, What do I do? And often finding no answers.

So what did you think when you realized that your baby is going to have to deliver this baby?

She was scared. She was sad. She didn't want to go through it.

That was probably one of those days that will just stick in my head forever. I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional. It's sad. I think about a woman, a girl, with no rights of her own, basically. She can't make a decision about her own body.

Since the fall of Roe, the number of rape-related pregnancies in states with restrictions is in the tens of thousands. It's become a national flashpoint. In some states, with no or minimal exceptions for rape, politicians left defending those laws.

Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas.

God is perfect. God does not make mistakes, and for some reason, he allows that to happen.

I think it could be fair to say that there is a lot of confusion and this information about abortion across the country.

You're happy?

Regina never imagined in her wildest dreams that she would be grandmother at just 33 years old.

It's been a really tough last year for you and your family.

Oh, yes. It's very tough. I didn't cry as much as I did last year.

Do you struggle to make ends meet?

Yes. It's hard. Very hard, especially the people with kids.

Regina has three kids, all girls. She holds down a job during the day and attends nursing school. Life was hard but doable. One of the poorest counties in the poorest state in the country. That was until late 2022, when her middle daughter, who we will call Ashley, started withdrawing. She quit the cheer team and stopped going outside. Then Ashley started getting sick, really sick.

She ended up throwing up. She was throwing up a lot. We took her to the hospital. They took her to the back. The nurse was like, You're pregnant. And that's when I just broke down and started crying. Baby, she's 12. She don't know nothing about to have no babies. Nothing.

There wasn't even enough time for the shock to wear off before the next bomb hit. Ashley said she had been raped by a stranger in her own yard.

Put his hands over her face, over her mouth, and took her to the side of the house, to the back, and stuck his stuff inside her. Then I was like, That's rape. She didn't know him. She didn't know his name. Nothing.

To hear what she's describing at 12 years old.

I was hurt, baby. My heart broke.

I was on call at the hospital.

Dr. Erica Balthrop is a board-certified OB-GYN, one of only seven in the Mississippi Delta region.

I performed the ultrasound, and the two of them watching it together, and mom tears are just streaming down her face.

Eleven weeks. Eleven weeks. And I asked about options. What's the option? Abortions. She said, The closest one is in Chicago. I said, Chicago? It's like $800, $1,500 to have an abortion up there. I'm like, I got to drive, I got to leave work. I can't afford that.

Since the fall of Rome, all the states surrounding Mississippi instituted similar bans and restrictions, some without rape exceptions at at all. Abortion access basically disappeared across the whole region.

None in Tennessee, none next door in Arkansas, none next door in Alabama, none.

So the only option for a woman that can afford to travel is to travel hundreds of miles away.

Take off work, find a sitter, do what they have to do.

While Mississippi law does include that exception for rape, those cases must be documented with law enforcement. Ashley's rape was reported to police, but with so much confusion about the laws, Regina didn't know they could use that to ask for help. Even finding a doctor to do an abortion would be a challenge.

She was She was jailed by the system because she had a rape that she actually reported. Physicians have so much at stake in terms of losing their medical license, financial penalties, and in some cases, criminalization leading to jail time.

If you meet the exception and you can afford to still get an abortion in this state, where do you go?

You can go to any OB office if they are willing.

If they are willing.

The provider has to be willing. Most people wouldn't do it here in the state. They would refer you out.

Do you believe that these laws are designed to make it nearly impossible, even for a victim of rape, to have access to abortion?

That's a loaded question. Yeah, I do.

The numbers back that up. In 2021, there were about 3,800 abortions provided in Mississippi. But the Mississippi Department of Health says that in all of 2023, there were only four abortion exceptions granted in the entire state. They did not track whether any of those were in cases of rape. We reached out to a number of Mississippi hospitals to ask about protocol and rape exceptions. None wanted to comment specifically. And yet the numbers also show across the 14 states that restricted abortion, researchers estimated using historical data, there may have been nearly 65,000 pregnancies caused by rape.

The reality is that rapes are underreported. And so when you have a situation where you have an abortion ban that requires a report, it's women are much less likely to use that pathway to get an abortion when they feel that they need one.

We wanted to ask lawmakers in Mississippi about cases like Ashley's. We repeatedly reached out to the office of Governor Tate Reeves and to several state lawmakers, including some who had talked about a culminating the rape exception. We also reached out to Mississippi senators and representatives in Washington. None responded. Regina decided to keep her daughter's pregnancy private, homeschooling Ashley. Then over the summer of 2023, after turning 13, she gave birth to a son.

She didn't have to go through this. It's not her time to go through this. He took my child innocent.

Police arrested the accused rapist last year. Regina says they used DNA from the baby to prove the link. He remains behind bars charged with felony rape.

Was that any relief?

Yes. It's justice, baby.

Regina says her priority now is making sure her daughter can still be a kid, which means raising her grandson herself.

Did Ashley start to realize what had just happened in the situation?

As you know, she got a baby. I let her be a child. So I raise them. There she go.

When Ashley arrives fresh off the school bus, she jumps in to help. But even just helping is a lot for a kid.

Describe what your typical day is like. You mentioned you go to school and then you come home and changing diapers, making bottles.

I don't like shiny pamphlets like that.

You stay busy between homework and caring for the baby.

It can be a lot, though. Feed him, take it down.

A lot you have to juggle.

Yes, a lot.

Regina and Ashley say they want the world to know the real impacts of laws like these on real families like theirs.

Should your daughter, who told you she was raped at 12 years old, have had to give birth?

No, ma'am. She didn't have to give birth to your rapist child.

What are her hopes for Ashley?

She want to be a nurse. I'm going to still continue raising a baby to help finish her childhood. I don't want her to go to college. Be that nurse. Get me up out of here.

Hi, everyone. George Stefanopoulos here. Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel. If you'd like to get more videos, show highlights, and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel. Don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts. Thanks for watching.