According to this news item, a Saudi shariah court gave a very mild response to a forced abortion, which means that killing of foetus is not a capital punishment. There are two questions which need to be answered (1) abortion is legal? and (2) Imam’s are above the law?
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2005-daily/09-09-2005/main/main17.htm
Saudi court verdict appals other judges
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Our special correspondent*
ISLAMABAD: A Shariah court judge in Saudi Arabia has issued a controversial verdict in a case involving a woman whose husband, an Imam of a mosque, had resorted to abortion pills and also physical assault to end her pregnancy, Saudi press reported.
The ruling by a judge in the Riyadh district court was that the husband should repent and seek Allah’s forgiveness for his deceitful act. The wife was shocked by the verdict. Other judges and lawyers were appalled as well. The woman said she would appeal against it. She wants the court to punish her husband for the crimes he has committed against her.
In her lawsuit, the 25-year-old woman described the Imam as the first man in her life. She said she did not know much about her husband except that he works as an Imam of a mosque in Riyadh. She was encouraged to accept him and be his second wife only because he was an Imam.
“Although he was always busy with his first wife and children I never thought of deserting him because he was the first man in my life,” she said. But these feelings didn’t last long because of his maltreatment. She described her life after marriage. “He ordered me not to tell anyone in the neighbourhood that I am his wife or even utter his name. He totally neglected me to the extent that I had to ask the driver to get me breakfast in Ramadan from one of the charities in the neighbourhood.”
She said when he came to know she was in her third month of pregnancy, he told her to get an abortion. On hearing this, she fled to her family in Tabuk. After a few days he came all the way to Tabuk to apologize for his misconduct. He promised he would change his ways and convinced her to accompany him to Riyadh.
When they arrived in Riyadh, she was surprised to find that he had rented a small flat one room and a toilet on the roof of a building, for her. “From the moment we arrived in Riyadh, he started mistreating me and exerting great pressure on me to terminate my pregnancy,” she said adding, “When I refused, he resorted to a trick. He replaced the pills prescribed by the doctor with others that induce abortion.” The abortion pills affected her health. “Because of the new pills I developed some complications like difficulty in breathing. This compelled him to take me to a hospital where he was told the baby was all right but its heartbeat was weak.”
She said: “Despite this, he pressed for my discharge under the pretext that he would take me to another hospital. The doctor agreed to discharge me after he signed an undertaking relieving the hospital from any responsibility in case I developed any complications.”
Then came the gruesome part. “Instead of taking me to another hospital, he took me to the tiny flat and there he exercised all the acrobat drills he could muster and jumped on my abdomen until he killed the foetus. I was bleeding and in hospital the doctors operated on me to clean the uterus and stop the haemorrhage,” the woman said.
More suffering was to come for the woman. She said: "Immediately after I was discharged from the hospital, he divorced me and sent me back to my family. She said despite the evident physical and psychological damage he had caused her, the verdict was very lenient as if he had not committed any crime that necessitated punishment
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