Abortion, the Left, and Islam

Recently, there has been a huge kerfluffle about abortion. Since I wasn’t paying too much attention to this until the last few hours, I’m going to ignore the details. But many leftist issues these days get confused and muddled when one considers the leftist stance on Islam, and abortion is one of those issues. Specifically, the left supports both abortion and Muslims, who are mostly against abortion.

What does shari’a imply about abortion? It doesn’t look so good. See here, for example. While it’s true that it is allowed to some extent in some countries, the typical rule seems to be to allow it only when the mother’s life is in danger.

According to this article (p. 80), in Iran a liberal abortion law allowing abortion on request was passed in 1977, but it was overturned after the Iranian revolution and is now only legal when the mother’s life is in danger.

Basically, there just is no reason to assume that abortion under shari’a will be as liberal as it is now. If you’re a woman who is dedicated to preserving abortion on request, you need to think long and hard about the left’s current alliance with Islam, an alliance that doesn’t take into account women’s issues at all.

Comments

[Mark Spahn]

John,
Thanks for the link in
http://iwantanewleft.typepad.com/i-want-a-new-left/2012/02/abortion-the-left-and-islam.html
to references to the abortion law in various Muslim
countries. But these laws are all beside the point
when you realize that al-Azhar University -- the
closest thing that the Islamic world, or at least the
Sunni world, has to a Vatican -- has ruled that
under sharia law, no parent or grandparent may be
punished for killing his or her child or grandchild.
Abortion is just a subset of this ruling.
Thus a 20-year-old mother may with sharia impuity
kill her 2nd-trimester fetus, or with equal impunity wait
till she is 70 and her child is in his or her 152nd trimester.

This makes Islam very strictly pro-choice.
For more about this ruling, see
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/12/chapter-and-verse.html .

[John Pepple]

Mark: Thanks for the link, but I’m not persuaded. Someone once said that a right is nothing but a probability. (And one of the things I found frightening in connection with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was that the probability that offensive free speech would be protected in the West was much less than I thought it was.) Islam is a very male-oriented religion which is controlled by men, and if I were a woman I wouldn’t count on your reasoning being enacted. For example, it could turn out, should the ulema ever be forced to rule on it, that being allowed to kill one’s children means just honor killings and not abortions. And even if they did allow abortions, that doesn’t mean that “pro-choice” would mean what feminists want it to mean. The second link (p. 80, second column) mentions that there can be “medical” restrictions, such as requiring the authorization of several doctors and maybe spousal consent.

So, while Islam may be pro-choice in theory, that doesn’t mean that they ever will be in practice.

[Mark Spahn]

Yes, your references describe not sharia law, but the secular law of various Islamic countries. And even under a pure-sharia legal regime, of the six people who are entitled to kill you with impunity (your two parents and your four grandparents), what if some of them want you dead and others want you alive? I find that when I put questions like this to an "Ask Dr. Fatwa" site, I never receive an answer. Maybe you will have better luck.

[Abortion Clinics in Moorpark]

Amazing how simple it can be to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic, you made my day.