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Dr. Ahmed Raïssouni is a Leading Islamic scholar. He is the former head of the Uniqueness and Reform Movement, the preaching branch of Morocco’s Justice and Development party. Dr. Ahmed Raïssouni is also the vice president of the World Association of Muslim Scholars. He is currently teaching in Qatar, Morocco and various other countries.[/symple_box]
One of the questions that stir a lot of controversy in Morocco nowadays is that of abortion. Some Moroccan Ministries did a good job when they decided to launch a national debate on the subject. Despite the official intervention, or at least interest, in shedding some light on the subject at stake, the move did not change much in the per-se nature of the fight this subject triggers, nor did it drastically change the type of arguments advanced by different clans to promote their views on the subject. Indeed, as various parties are locking horns, the fight is getting intense.
In the wake of the aforementioned debate, it became clearer to me that the fight mainly revolves around two parties: The Islamists vs the pro-abortion clan.
In this article, I won’t get into the essence of the subject from a law and Islamic jurisprudence perspective. I will rather bring forth sideway remarks on the sidelines of the ongoing debate.
1- Generally speaking, I am for reviewing the laws of abortion in Morocco’s penal code, from a scientific and rational perspective. Again, and generally speaking, I see that abortion is a necessity in some cases, can amount to a crime in other ones, while there are cases that lie in between, and which I prefer to leave open to the Law and Jurisprudence experts to strike a balance on, no matter what their decision goes, as long as the following jurisprudence law is respected La Inkara fi masaaeel al Ijtihad (No denial in ijtihad questions). All matters that are given to experts of the domain, including abortion specialists, Muslim scientists and experts of the field will entail a reasonable take on the subject. The most essential thing is that we shoehorn our opinion despite the minority’s hegemony on such matters, a hegemony we have been living under for various decades now.
2- In the wake of this ongoing national debate, various people affirm that the aim behind all this windy talk is to regulate abortion. Others, on the other hand, say that they are for regulating abortion, yet they refuse to make it legal. The fact is abortion laws in Morocco are already enacted, and the Moroccan civil law allocates 10 chapters for this matter(From Chapters 449 to 458), let alone the various reforms that took place in the post-gaze of the initial enacting. To regulate something is to bring it forth to the legislation table, and then to subject it to the various laws legislated for that sake. This is already existing in Morocco. Abortion is already regulated and it does neither make sense to say “we are calling upon it enacting,” nor does it make sense to say “we are opposing its enacting.” Nevertheless, there is a systematic use of verbal contortions by the pro-abortion clan when saying “we rally for regulating abortion,” as in all truthfulness, what they mean is “we rally for drafting new laws to make abortion available on request.”
3- The pro-abortion clan resort to other verbal contortions when they claim that their aim is to fight the “clandestine abortion scourge,” while in all truthfulness they aim to remove all restrictions abortion is subject to in the Moroccan penal code. And if they were really fighting clandestine abortion as they advance, they would have put all their efforts in halting those who support it and those involved in it, including pregnant women who resort to it, and doctors who perform it in closed doors with the help of nurses. Indeed if that was their endeavor, they would have rallied for applying the existing laws to the letter, instead of inciting people to breach them, and assisting those who break them. Anyways, demands for reviewing the current laws of the Moroccan penal code regarding abortion remain a good endeavor, in order to fill the shortcomings the current ones suffer from, yet the move should be undertaken far away from circumlocutions and verbal contortions.
4- The pro-abortion clan’s main demands hinge, in their philosophy, on the concept of “self-ownership,” including the freedom to have sexual relations with whomever they want to. And since abortion constitutes an impediment for them to reach that end, and constitutes a pressing problem on their way to freedom, then this barrier must be removed, to relieve people of this obstacle. This goes by removing all restrictions and making abortion available on request. Their fight is then a fight for lust, while the Islamists’ fight is a humanistic one, as those latter are rallying for human’s right to life, and the right for generations to exist. This is why the Islamists stay put when it comes to criminalizing the killers of innocent fetuses, unless it is for a compelling reason.
In other words, the pro-abortion clan rally for opening up the vaginas and disabling the normal functioning of the wombs, while the Islamists rally for preserving the vaginas and aspire for normally functioning wombs.
This essay was translated by Idriss Benarafa from the Arabic.
