Moroccan Activists Challenge Law on Extramarital Sex and Abortion

The "Hajar Raïssouni" case continues to spread. Many Moroccans are speaking out on the issue of individual freedoms.

This is the case of these two women, public figures, who openly declare themselves outlaws. "We have had extramarital sexual relations. We have undergone, practiced or been accomplices of an abortion. We have learned to pretend, to compromise, to pretend," we can read in the first lines of the tribune.

For Leila Slimani and Sonia Terrab, Morocco suffers from what they call the "culture of lies and social hypocrisy" that generates "violence, arbitrariness, intolerance".

"Every day, every hour, in secret, in hiding, women like me, men like you, conservatives or progressives, public figures or anonymous, from all backgrounds and all regions, dare and assume, enjoy and exist by themselves, break chains and flout laws. Because they love," the text adds.

While recalling that their bodies belong to them, and to no one else, the authors of the tribune signed by several prominent figures such as Ali Baddou, the writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, the artist Mahi Binebine, the actor Fahd Benchemsi, believe that Moroccan society is currently mature enough to accept a change for the respect of privacy and the right of each to dispose of his body.

The signatories wonder why they should continue to accept "repressive and unenforceable laws" that have become "tools of political or personal revenge".

In Morocco, 14,503 people were prosecuted for extramarital sexual relations, 3,048 imprisoned for adultery in 2018, and between 600 and 800 for clandestine abortions, every day.

According to figures held by the National Institute of Solidarity with Women in Distress, the number of children born out of wedlock in Morocco would be 50,000 each year, children who do not benefit from recognition or paternity or inheritance rights, while 300 babies are found abandoned dead or alive on the streets of Casablanca each year. The tribune believes it is time to restore their right to dispose of their body as a human being.