A Moroccan doctor and his assistant were arrested Thursday for attempting to perform an abortion on a 15-year-old girl, which is illegal in Morocco, police sources told AFP.
The arrest was made at a private clinic in Meknes (in the north of the country) by agents from the local police headquarters’ anti-gang brigade, according to the same source.
He added that the doctor and his assistant (aged 71 and 64) were arrested.
Without giving further details, the police source added that the girl, her mother and her companion are available for a court investigation.
“A 15-year-old girl trying to end a pregnancy in decent sanitary conditions (…) When will this charade end?”, the feminist collective “Hors-la-Loi”, which campaigns for the decriminalization of abortion and the protection of individual freedoms in Morocco, protested on Facebook.
“What do they want, that the 15-year-old girl keeps the child? Or that her mother take her to a quack? Or that she ends up committing suicide?” denounced on Twitter Narjis Benazzou, an activist of the collective.
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In Morocco, women who abort are punished with imprisonment from six months to two years, and those who perform abortions are punished with imprisonment from one to five years.
The only exceptions are cases in which the mother’s health is at risk.
According to associations fighting for their legalization, between 600 and 800 clandestine abortions are carried out in Morocco every day.
In 2015, the country was embroiled in a wide debate over the “urgency” of relaxing its legislation in the face of the scourge of clandestine abortions, sometimes performed in disastrous sanitary conditions.
An official commission recommended allowing abortions in “certain cases of force majeure,” particularly rape or severe fetal abnormalities.
However, no legislation was passed to support these recommendations, which received strong support from women’s rights activists.
