Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Texas abortion ban is not an Islamic thing

A lot of people should know better. And I acknowledge that I really didn't, until I read this article.
It was no surprise to me that the extreme abortion ban that went into effect in Texas last week led to Islamophobic hashtags and media conversations. After all, contrasting the United States to Islam is part of an age-old imperialist way of thinking that stems from Orientalism, which seeks to differentiate between what is “right” in the West and “wrong” in the “Other.”

...It’s Islamophobic to assume that Muslim countries love banning abortion. It’s also ignorant to present misogyny as a “foreign” problem that should be expected in the supposedly “less progressive” nations of the East, but is a shock in the United States.

In Islam, abortion is permitted in cases such as rape, incest, socioeconomic difficulties, impact on the pregnant person’s mental or physical health, and fetal impairment. Texas SB 8 does not permit abortion in any of these situations, except for a life-threatening physical condition. Out of 47 Muslim-majority countries, only 18 have abortion laws as restrictive as Texas SB 8, according to a 2014 study in the journal Health Policy and Planning. - Rewire News Group

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