Meriam Ibrahim, sentenced to die in Sudan over her Christianity, reportedly gives birth in jail

Meriam Ibrahim, the woman sentenced to death for apostasy in Sudan while heavily pregnant, gave birth to a baby girl in jail, according to reports.

Ibrahim, 27, gave birth to a girl early Tuesday in the hospital wing of a prison near Khartoum, one of her lawyers, Elshareef Ali, told Bloomberg.

"They didn't even take Meriam to a hospital - she just delivered inside a prison clinic," the lawyer told The Telegraph. "Neither her husband nor I have been allowed to see them yet."

Ibrahim already has a 20-month-old son who is staying with her in her prison cell, according to multiple reports.

Ibrahim was sentenced to death by hanging by a Shariah court in Khartoum earlier this month because she is a Muslim by birth who married a Christian man and refused to recant her Christian faith.

The case has drawn widespread international attention and outrage.

"The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion, is abhorrent and should never be even considered," Amnesty International said in a statement, quoting its Sudan researcher, Manar Idriss.

"It is flagrant breach of international human rights law," she said.

As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith. By law, children must follow their father's religion.

Sudan introduced Islamic shariah laws in the early 1980s, a move that contributed to the resumption of an insurgency in the mostly animist and Christian south of Sudan. An earlier round of civil war lasted 17 years and ended in 1972. The south seceded in 2011 to become the world's newest nation, South Sudan.

Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup, is an Islamist who says his country will implement Islam more strictly now that the non-Muslim south is gone.

Ibrahim's husband is an American citizen, and some American politicians have called for granting her asylum here.

The U.S. State Department has only said it's "deeply disturbed" by the sentence and has called on Sudan to respect freedom of religion.