Abortion bill for rape victims in Egypt

Written by Egypt News
Monday, 19 November 2007
More than 20,000 rape victims are appealing to legislators to allow them to have abortions. It came after MP Mohamed Khalil Koweta submitted a proposal to the Egyptian Assembly of People The proposal which pledged the Egyptian Assembly of People to amend Article 29 of the Penal Code which would allow rape victims to choose abortion. According to Egyptian Gazette newspaper, the MP said that the amended article should take into consideration that the decision of Public Prosecution in this respect should be made as quickly as possible before the pregnancy enters its 36th week. He added although rape is a capital offence, the Penal Code ignores the sufferings of the victim, especially if she falls pregnant, Former Egyptian Grand Mufti, Nasr Farid Wassel sympathized with these victims and their families as he decreed that a rape victim should have abortion before the fetus is 120 days old, Koweta explained. His bill is expected to be debated during this parliamentary session, which started last week. In the meantime, a 19-year-old housewife in Shubra el-Kheima told police that she was raped by four secondary school students after they abducted her from a microbus. The woman, who asked not to be named, said she was gang-raped one whole day and let her go only after she had almost collapsed. Meanwhile, a student living in a Cairo suburb reported that she had been seized by five university students in a car. The Girl added that, after they forced me into their car, they sped to an apartment of one of theirs in a Nasr City, where I was repeatedly raped for two days. According to estimates recently published by the National Centre for Sociological and Criminological Research, 68 per cent of girls and women are the victims of sexual harassment on public transport and places of work. The harassment added that about 20,000 girls and women were raped in 2006. Most of their attackers were unemployed. Crimes of rape have increased alarmingly over the past five years, the National Centre for Sociological and Criminological Research said It added that more incidents of child abuse were recorded in the recent period. However, many rapes go unreported in order to spare families of victims from disgrace.