A Moroccan teenager has died after a clandestine abortion in a town in a rural region of the country, local media reported on Wednesday, sparking outrage from feminist NGOs. The 14-year-old girl was buried on Tuesday night in the town of Boumia, in the province of Midelt (southeast), according to a video from Chouf TV, a web-tv, present at the scene.
“The abortion took place in the house of a young man who sexually exploited the victim,” the coalition of Moroccan feminist associations, “Spring of Dignity,” said in a statement on Tuesday.
“A cluster of institutionalized violence suffered by women”
After the tragedy, the royal gendarmerie arrested “the victim’s mother, a nurse and the owner of the house where the clandestine abortion was performed,” public channel 2M said on its site on Wednesday.
Then, a fourth suspect was arrested on suspicion of having “provided assistance during the abortion”, according to the same source, who adds that the prosecution’s investigation continues.
“This tragedy is a consequence of an accumulation of institutionalized violence suffered by women,” said feminist activist Betty Lachgar.
Morocco had engaged in 2015 in a profound debate on the “urgency” of a relaxation of its legislation in the face of the scourge of hundreds of clandestine abortions carried out every day, in sometimes disastrous sanitary conditions.
An official commission had recommended in the process that abortion be authorized in “some cases of force majeure”, in particular in the case of rape or serious malformations. Since then, no law has come to support these recommendations ardently supported by women’s rights advocates.
Source: BFM TV
