Retired Doctor Arrested in Agadir for Illegal Abortion Operation

The individual, who already had a criminal record for similar acts, was apprehended during a police operation in an apartment in the city.

During the arrest, the retired doctor was caught in the middle of an abortion operation on a 22-year-old woman, in the company of another woman, under conditions that did not comply with the prevailing hygiene standards. At the same time, the police officers also arrested a secretary working in another clinic, suspected of being an accomplice to this act.

Following these arrests, the retired doctor, the secretary and the two women involved were taken into custody.

Towards partial legalization?

Morocco records between 600 and 800 illegal abortions per day. Women’s and children’s rights protection associations are calling for harsher sentences for rapists and pedophiles and the decriminalization of abortion. Faced with the statistics of women who died from clandestine abortions, King Mohammed VI had mentioned in 2015 the possibility of partially legalizing abortion. Abortion was to be legalized in "a few cases of force majeure" such as for "pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, or for serious malformations and incurable diseases that the fetus could contract," he had said.