Pro-life and pro-choice may fret and fight but this is not necessarily the Islamic perspective on bioethics, author Elisabetta Necco tells Gamal Nkrumah Simone de Beauvoir observed so perceptively that one is not born a woman but becomes one. And the same could be said for the Muslim woman -- one becomes a Muslim woman. Many readers are no doubt familiar with such box office hits dealing with bioethics, ethical controversies such as abortion, and Citizen Ruth (1996) and Juno (2007). Such films deal with bioethics in a Western context. And then, of course, there is the Muslim woman who populates the Western imagination with its attendant deeply rooted archetypes and stereotypes that do not necessarily make it into the traditional interpretation of Muslim womanhood. Author and bioethics researcher Elisabetta Necco is Italian by birth, born in the southern Italian port city of Naples, and therefore native of a staunchly Roman Catholic nation. "I am very interested in the differences between Christian and Muslim traditions concerning bioethics," Necco told Al-Ahram Weekly. She has been living in Egypt for the past three years which, she concedes, "radically and irreversibly changed my life". Her son, Leonardo, was born in Cairo at a time when she was grappling with bioethical questions and considerations in predominantly Islamic countries. "I am especially intrigued by questions of euthanasia, organ transplanting, biomedical research, artificial insemination and above all, abortion," the author explains. "I chose to conduct research on this particular study because I am a woman, I suppose," she shrugs nonchalantly. Necco was struck by the stark differences in perceptions of bioethical controversies between predominantly Muslim countries and Western nations where the issue of abortion in particular is considered a political question hotly contested between pro-life and pro-choice groups. The late Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II wrote in 1995 his controversial treatise Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), a forceful defence of the right of the unborn child to life. "In traditional Christianity, for instance, sexual life is closely connected with reproduction and inextricably intertwined with marriage as monogamous and permanent. Consequently, contraception and abortion are prohibited." With the Italian capital Rome being the seat of the Vatican, Necco is acutely conscious of the conceptual contra- distinctions and practical differences between the Islamic and the Roman Catholic notions of bioethics. "The Quran does not explicitly mention the techniques of contraception, so that lawyers try to extrapolate rules of the Quranic verses. In sharp contrast, azl is cited in the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Mohamed, and it is not prohibited as a form of contraception," Necco explains. " Azl ( coitus interruptus ) is traditionally frowned upon in Roman Catholic societies since Christianity connects the sexual act closely with procreation rather than with explicit sexual pleasure, even within the conjugal context." Necco, who lived in Tunisia and Palestine before moving to Egypt, was struck by the more discerning emphasis by Muslims on the right to sexual gratification as a divinely sanctioned conjugal right in Islam. "Most Westerners judge Islam by their own Christian standards and values. Most Westerners are ignorant of the moral values of Muslims." In Roman Catholic countries all forms of birth control were considered sinful until quite recently when the influence of the Church began to wane. The use of condoms, the pill, intrauterine devices and even coitus interruptus were unacceptable sins. The vexing question of abortion that has bedeviled Western societies for at least a century is directly commensurate with the ethical controversies arising in part from the traditional Christian conception of marriage that differs radically from Muslim notions of conjugal rights. Necco claims that in comparison with traditional Christian mores and particularly as far as Roman Catholicism is concerned, Islam appears far more modern and open-minded in its attitude to bioethics in general and abortion and contraception in particular. Islam is far less dogmatic when it comes to bioethics and more specifically with the areas of bioethics that Necco is interested in -- health policy, law, religion and biomedical research. Abortion and birth control feature prominently in her work. Abortion, which the United Nations-affiliated World Health Organisation estimates results in 70,000 women annually and five million disabilities per year, is a highly contentious issue. Some 42 million abortions are carried out annually around the world. Braided Lives, the novel written in 1997 by Marge Piercy, deals poignantly with the problems associated with unsafe abortion prior to legislation legalising the forced expulsion of the embryo or fetus from the uterus in several Western nations. In Muslim countries the problems associated with abortion do not necessarily arise because it is regarded as necessarily incompatible with religion, but rather because of wider issues of poverty, illiteracy, the dearth of biomedical research and the lack of a clear health policy and family planning. So from the outset it might be tempting to dismiss the whole concept of abortion as a non- political question, but as the cliché goes "the personal is the political". The pro-choice groups in the West who insist on a woman's right to choose whether or not to have a child insist that it is a political matter. A woman, therefore, has the right to abort her child without giving any specific reasons. On this particular issue, Islam and Christianity appear pretty close conceptually. For even in Islam most religious scholars and jurists concur that abortion is morally unacceptable 120 days after inception when the soul is supposed to enter the fetus. In traditional Christianity, or Roman Catholicism at any rate, any attempt to abort the embryo from the very moment of conception is a grave sin, tantamount to murder. Necco likes to quote from the Quran. "Whoever slays a soul unless it be for manslaughter or mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men, and whoever keeps it alive, it is as though he kept alive all men." Islam, however, is more flexible as far as abortion is concerned, especially when the health of the mother-to-be is at risk. The controversial question of the precise gestational age of the fetus sometimes arises in Muslim societies. However, Islamic scholars and jurists invariably sanction therapeutic abortions. The onus is on the mother's health and general well-being, which takes precedence over that of the unborn child. "Saving the mother's life is the priority. It comes first." In this respect, Necco views Islamic teachings as far in advance of those of her own Roman Catholic roots. Another controversial subject in bioethics is that of birth control. Necco diligently researched its import and application in Egypt in particular. "President Gamal Abdel-Nasser did not support birth control as a policy because he was convinced that the key was not to tell people how to control population growth but how to increase production and maximise land resources," Necco notes. "The Egyptian government began to formulate strategic plans for population control and family planning in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993, the Egyptian government established the Ministry of State for Population and Family Welfare. A national plan of five years was formulated with the aim of sensitising the population about the use of contraceptives which, in most cases, were not used because of ingrained cultural and not religious prejudices." Just as abortion is too important to be left to the medical practitioners, family planning is too important to be left to be regulated by the state. That is undeniably a positive change. This potential reform in legal status of women wishing to abort bears more than passing resemblance to political reform than to personal will.
