Egyptian women's rights advocates renewed urgent demands for the state to legalize abortion for rape survivors, condemning government failure to address survivors' needs in the health, legal and political systems.
The demand followed the conclusion of “Not My Fault,” a nationwide campaign by the Egyptian Center for Women Legal Assistance. It ended Monday with a policy roundtable titled “Abortion and raped women: Between law and religion,” coinciding with the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
“This is not a new invention,” said Azza Soliman, founder of the Center and chair of its board of trustees. “Other Arab countries have already done this. But Egyptian women remain excluded from the legislative agenda, and it's women who bear the consequences.”
Soliman voiced full support for abortion access, not only in cases of rape or incest, but as an unconditional right. “A woman has the right to decide whether to have a child or not,” she said. “And children have the right to be wanted.”
Abortion under all circumstances is prohibited under Egypt's Penal code of 1937, which subject any woman who induces an abortion, and anyone who helps her in doing so, to imprisonment. If the abortion was performed by a medical practitioner, the penalty increases to imprisonment with hard labor.
The campaign's final recommendations included creating dedicated units in public hospitals for rape survivors, training medical staff to provide safe, dignified abortion care, and drafting legislation to explicitly legalize abortion within the first 120 days of pregnancy in cases of rape or incest. It also urged amendments to the penal code and the adoption of a unified law to combat gender-based violence.
“Rape survivors are punished twice,” said Soliman. “First by the assault, and then by being forced to carry the resulting pregnancy.”
Soliman referenced legal and religious precedents, including supportive Islamic legal opinions by former Al-Azhar Grand Imams Nasr Farid Wasel (1998) and Mohamed Sayed Tantawi (2008), and a 1993 Constitutional Court ruling affirming space for ijtihad (interpretation) in religious and legal reasoning.
She also cited regional models permit abortion in cases of rape, such as Tunisia.
Feminist researcher Ghadeer Ahmed challenged the event’s framing, calling the title of the roundtable gender-insensitive. She proposed alternatives such as “women subjected to rape” or “pregnancies resulting from rape.”
Ghadeer also pointed out that reproductive health services in Egypt are overwhelmingly limited to married women. “If I'm unmarried, do I not have reproductive rights?” she said, adding that illegal abortions often leave women vulnerable to extortion, abuse, medical danger and severe social stigma.
“If abortion is illegal, I might end up in a basement clinic,” she said. “I could be blackmailed for money or sex, or threatened after the procedure.”
Ghadeer called for sweeping reforms across Egypt's health, legal and media systems to better protect and support survivors. She also urged the Interior Ministry to rebuild trust with women. “A woman should feel safe when she walks into a police station.”
Azhar University professor Abdel Baset Salama, an expert in Islamic discourse analysis, argued that abortion in rape cases should be approached through a humanitarian, not dogmatic, lens.
“Most contemporary fatwas prohibit abortion without regard for real human suffering,” he said. “Much of today's religious discourse simply recycles patriarchal thinking and claims to speak for God's will.”
