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The 2018 law in Algeria only grants therapeutic termination of pregnancy when the mother’s life or her psychological and mental health are seriously threatened. The new text introduced recourse to abortion “when the conditions detected by prenatal diagnosis provide evidence that the embryo or foetus is suffering from a serious disease or malformation that does not allow its viable development.”
Abortion authorized for these two reasons can only be performed in public hospitals and is “subject to authorization from the competent administration.”
Outside this very restricted context, the practice of abortion falls under the scope of article 304 of the Penal Code which stipulates that “whoever by food, drinks, drugs, manoeuvres, violence or by any other means, has procured or attempted to procure the abortion of a pregnant or presumed pregnant woman, whether with her consent or not, is punished by imprisonment of one to five years and a fine of 500 to 10,000 dinars. In addition, in the case of a resulting death, the sentence shall be imprisonment for 10 to 20 years. ”
The Algerian legislator has merely translated the religious principle, which considers abortion as “the murder of a human being.” Islam does not grant any exemption after 120 days, or even 40 days for some currents, because “the soul is breathed into the foetus.”
In a society that is strongly influenced by Islamist principles, abortion is an absolute taboo and can lead to social excommunication. The collective denial is so heavy that abortions escape statistics. We therefore only dispose of estimates to assess the phenomenon. According to the Association algérienne pour la planification familiale (Algerian Association for Family Planning), there are around 200 to 300 clandestine abortions and 80 deaths per year. According to professionals, these figures represent the lowest average in both rural and urban areas.
Women who do not wish to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term have no other option than clandestine, illicit, or criminal abortion, depending on viewpoints. For those who can afford it, Europe or Tunisia save them from the tragedy of motherhood outside marriage. For others, word of mouth enables to find, in the best of cases, the doctor, nurse or charlatan who relieves them from their burden at a high price (10,000 to 70,000 dinars). Nevertheless, the financial obstacle is lower when compared to the difficulty of finding the person who agrees to conduct the operation.
The collective denial is so heavy that abortions escape statistics. According to the “Algerian Association for Family Planning,” there are around 200 to 300 clandestine abortions and 80 deaths per year.
A doctor located in the east of the capital for nearly twenty years does not hide her opposition. “I have always refused to perform an abortion, first of all because it is forbidden but above all because I am a believer and I cannot take someone’s life. However, I don’t judge these women,” she says.
Although she states that young women are responsible for their condition, this doctor primarily accuses Algerian society, which, according to her, denies the need for sex education to prepare young people.
“I have had patients who don’t even know their bodies,” she argues. And she continues, “They have sexual relation before marriage and know nothing about what is going on in their body. It’s totally silly to say that young people learn everything on the Internet. I remember a father who brought his 17-year-old daughter to me because she suffered from stomach pain and nausea. She was in such a state of confusion that she didn’t react when I told her she was pregnant. She clearly didn’t know. And that day I did what I will never forgive myself for. I told her father. Perhaps out of professional reflex, giving my diagnosis seemed like the right thing to do. He sat down, ran his hands over his face several times, looked at his daughter, said thank you and they left. I had learned to spot young women who came to the office, often without an appointment at the end of the day, sometimes accompanied by a friend or by their mother. I also knew that my secretary sometimes gave them the name of a clinic or a colleague who performs abortion. After all, everyone acts according to his or her conviction.”
Accidents sometimes occur in the difficult path of clandestine abortion and this is when they are reported in news sections. Illegal abortion is above all a high-risk act for the health and life of the patient. Under the law, women and the persons who have performed abortion, or provided the means for this act, are first and foremost regarded as “criminals” and judged as such.
Sometimes, these family tragedies have even darker sides that justice does not take into consideration. These unwanted pregnancies can result from rape or incest.
Conservatives and imams do not recognize these circumstances that they have fiercely opposed during debates over the health law to extend the authorization of abortion to victims of sexual assault. Victims of rape of the Maquis terrorists of the 1990s had waited a few years before a fatwa recognized their innocence.
Only women are guilty
Bearing a child out of wedlock remains one of the worst thing that can happen to a young Algerian woman. Every year, thousands of unwanted babies are abandoned. The gendarmerie regularly reports infanticide or newborns found in the garbage or in front of the doors of mosques or hospitals.
It goes without saying that in Algeria, fathers are never mentioned in these tragedies because there is a consensus on the fact that the “sin” of sexual relations outside marriage should be borne by women and them alone.
I remember a sentence he told her when she was in a panic: “Why do you want me to worry? After all, it’s inside your body, not inside mine.”
Since women are solely to blame, they must bear the consequences alone. Although it is very difficult to break the silence on the subject, testimonies delivered under anonymity reveal the extent of the suffering of women.
A young woman told us the story of a university friend who was 22 years old at the time of the incident. She is 24 today:
“She had been romantically involved with a man of her age for several months now, with whom she often had unprotected sexual relations. She found out about her pregnancy about three weeks after her missed period.
Despite the relationship that seemed serious between them, her boyfriend had taken the news very badly and was reacting as if he wasn’t concerned at all. I remember a sentence he told her when she was in a panic: “Why do you want me to worry? After all, it’s inside your body, not inside mine.” Poor thing, this had put her in all her states. By word of mouth she had heard about an old woman who performed abortions in a shed or a garage kind of place where you had to knock on the door and give her a code before being able to enter but she was afraid to go.
Eventually, her boyfriend managed to obtain abortion pills that he had found on the black market through a clandestine network. I don’t remember the name of the medication but I remember that she took two tablets under her tongue and she inserted one into her vagina to trigger the contractions.
She had done it in an apartment with no medical assistance and without being really sure how to take the pills. A few hours later, severe pain started. She screamed in pain until she passed out. We wanted to take her to the hospital because we were afraid that she would lose her life there, but she refused for fear of the consequences. She said she would rather die in that apartment than risk the story leaking out. Moreover, she and her boyfriend risked jail.
The pain was followed by haemorrhage. She went to the bathroom and a reddish lump came out. Her boyfriend left her a few days after this story, when he made sure she was no longer pregnant. She suffered from depression for about eight months. The image of the mass flushed down the toilet haunted her constantly, the conditions in which the abortion took place and the lack of support weighed heavily on her psychological state. Abnormal bleeding as well as a disruption in her menstrual cycle occurred for several months following the abortion. Today she has more or less recovered but it is still a painful page in her life.”
Misery and loneliness
Another testimony describes the loneliness of a young girl left alone in her suffering. A student who accompanied her remotely shares her story:
“It took place at the University of Bab-Ezzouar (USTHB), I only knew the person concerned by sight. She was a student in a different specialty from mine and lived in a university residence, but we often met during breaks, between two lectures.
Her story had spread across the faculties because one morning she had been heard screaming in the ladies toilet, screams that stirred up the whole building. I found her sitting on the floor in the sanitary facilities punching herself in the stomach and screaming like a hysteric. I managed to half understand that she was pregnant but didn’t know from whom. She had had sexual relations with different men and neither of them wanted to face the consequences or help her. She had failed to obtain the abortion pills and was threatening to kill herself in the toilet.
I heard from this girl a few days later, and was told that she had finally managed to obtain some pills that she had swallowed in the sanitary facilities at the faculty. She had suffered a severe bleeding that had obliged her to be absent for several days. Even the walls of toilet cubicle where she had had the haemorrhage were stained with blood.”
A blood considered impure for a society that has locked the bodies of women in a prison of regressive and sexist perceptions and laws.
