BREAKING: Abortion Criminalization Awful Public Policy

This account of the Moroccan government’s attempts to past modest reforms of the country’s bad abortion laws provides yet another lesson in how abortion laws are even worse in practice than in theory:

Morocco is one of the more liberal Muslim countries and allows the early termination of pregnancy, with spousal consent, to save the life of the woman or to preserve her physical or mental health. Still, abortion is stigmatized socially, legally and religiously, and abortions for unmarried women are illegal, resulting in high numbers of illegal terminations. A 2008 study, the most recent available, put the number of abortions in Morocco as high as 600 a day.

Last week a leading gynecologist, Chafik Chraibi, put the figure even higher. Dr. Chraibi, a professor of gynecology at Mohammed V University in Rabat, who is an ardent campaigner for legalizing abortion, said the real figure “is probably closer to 900 a day, when you take into account the nonmedical abortions carried out at home.”

“In Morocco, according to the World Health Organization, 13 percent of maternity deaths are from abortions,” he said.

Women coming to him after botched terminations — often carried out in makeshift operating rooms in filthy basements — were frequently “mutilated,” with many suffering from hemorrhaging uteri or perforated abdomens, Dr. Chraibi said.

Forcing women to carry pregnancies to term is terrible idea in any case. But even on its own terms criminalizing abortion does very little to protect fetal life, but is very successful in maiming and killing women. (Whoops — by discussing the actual consequences of bans on abortion I think I’m now guilty of “Borking.”)