When abortion consultation agencies get inquiries about abortion without their parents' consent, it most often comes from a Muslim girl. According to the law, everybody under 18 must have their parents' consent before they can have an abortion, but every year between 50 to 70 girls ask to do an abortion without their parents' knowledge and consent, according to the Danish Abortion Board's recent report this year. Many Muslim youth don't dare tell their parents that they are pregnant because they fear physical or mental punishment and in the worst case, of being killed.
This according to the report from the Abortion Board and abortion consultation agency in the capital region, which had gotten 45 inquiries last year, the most inquiries from young girls under 18.
Torben Hviid, head of the Abortion Board, says that a vast majority of the inquiries come from girls of Muslim background. They are afraid of being ostracized by their family and being sent to their homeland for re-education. They fear for their health and their lives.
A smaller group which seeks permission are Catholic girls of foreign background, and there's also a group of Danish girls who fear their parents' reaction - they are typically rejected, says Hviid.
There must be serious disagreements between the girl and her parents in order to get permission, says Helle Mundus, social workers in the abortion consultation agency in the capital region. She points out that several Muslim girls in other contexts have been monitored and beaten by older brothers because the girls didn't follow the family's traditions and norms.
"We recently had a girl who was beaten because she didn't comply with the family's wishes. She wanted an education but the family didn't want it. She was beaten so much by her older brother and threatened with her life that the police got involved and subsequently she was placed outside her home. When she soon after became pregnant, she didn't dare tell her mother about it," she says.
The girls usually have boyfriends in secret because the family don't want it. Either because the family wants to be involved in choosing the boyfriend, or because many Muslims don't allow sex or a boyfriend before marriage.
"Some girls don't have the possibility to protect themselves with for example contraceptive pills, because the mothers rummage through their things. They could go to the doctor and get a written prescription without the parents knowing anything, but they can't protect themselves because they are monitored," says Helle Mundus.
Amneh Hawwa, sexologist and gynecologist at Hvidovre Hospital, has dealt with many of the young girls. She stresses that it isn't Islam, but on the contrary something cultural, which determines whether the girls get an abortion without the parents consent.
She says that the girls are torn between two cultures. On the one hand they want to live a traditional life without sex before marriage, and that life they know from their family. On the other hand they want to have boyfriends and sexual relations like other Danish youth.
She says it's a huge problem since the girls live a double-life instead of recognizing that they are modern women who want sex
Source: Kristeligt Dagblad (Danish)
This according to the report from the Abortion Board and abortion consultation agency in the capital region, which had gotten 45 inquiries last year, the most inquiries from young girls under 18.
Torben Hviid, head of the Abortion Board, says that a vast majority of the inquiries come from girls of Muslim background. They are afraid of being ostracized by their family and being sent to their homeland for re-education. They fear for their health and their lives.
A smaller group which seeks permission are Catholic girls of foreign background, and there's also a group of Danish girls who fear their parents' reaction - they are typically rejected, says Hviid.
There must be serious disagreements between the girl and her parents in order to get permission, says Helle Mundus, social workers in the abortion consultation agency in the capital region. She points out that several Muslim girls in other contexts have been monitored and beaten by older brothers because the girls didn't follow the family's traditions and norms.
"We recently had a girl who was beaten because she didn't comply with the family's wishes. She wanted an education but the family didn't want it. She was beaten so much by her older brother and threatened with her life that the police got involved and subsequently she was placed outside her home. When she soon after became pregnant, she didn't dare tell her mother about it," she says.
The girls usually have boyfriends in secret because the family don't want it. Either because the family wants to be involved in choosing the boyfriend, or because many Muslims don't allow sex or a boyfriend before marriage.
"Some girls don't have the possibility to protect themselves with for example contraceptive pills, because the mothers rummage through their things. They could go to the doctor and get a written prescription without the parents knowing anything, but they can't protect themselves because they are monitored," says Helle Mundus.
Amneh Hawwa, sexologist and gynecologist at Hvidovre Hospital, has dealt with many of the young girls. She stresses that it isn't Islam, but on the contrary something cultural, which determines whether the girls get an abortion without the parents consent.
She says that the girls are torn between two cultures. On the one hand they want to live a traditional life without sex before marriage, and that life they know from their family. On the other hand they want to have boyfriends and sexual relations like other Danish youth.
She says it's a huge problem since the girls live a double-life instead of recognizing that they are modern women who want sex
Source: Kristeligt Dagblad (Danish)
10 comments:
Islam IS a culture. The ex-French President himself said that democracy is not a process, but a culture. Islam is a political, economic, military, and religious system. The very culture of Islam MUST change before this war against terrorism is over. I can't think of any cause of more wars than threat of cultural change.
Islam is the belief in God and His prophets, understandng that you have a soul and are accountable for your acts. That is what Islam is. There is nothing particularly European or anti-European about it. The very culture of Europe MUST change before Europe can again attain the status of being a free and open society. Every generation of people, whether Muslim, Christian, or other, continues a process of change. As soon as we let go of us vs them false thinking we can begin to evolve in consciousness.
Islam is the belief in the flogging of adulterers, the chopping off of hands of thieves, the institution of apartheid, the banning of free speech the punishment of thought crimes and the killing of any members of islam who decide to leave this doctrine and its barbaric past.
Islam with its fascist sharia law and allah as fuhrer is fundamentally opposed to democratic europe and has no place in a civlised society.
Dear Daphne,
You betray yourself in your choice of terminology.
Islamofascism, Allah as Fuehrer, fascist sharia law, Islamism as Apartheid etc. are all catch words of the latest Jewish Zionist Islamophobic offensive.
As a scholar of religions (and not as a religious scholar), I can point out that there simply is not much in the way of difference between traditional Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Should we Europeans or North Americans really concerne ourselves whether communities of Muslims or Jews voluntarily obey Sharia or Halakhah?
(Halakhah is Jewish religious law. It is very similar to Sharia except that the status of women in Halakhah is probably lower than that of women in Sharia. Can we attribute the focus of the media on Sharia with near total absence of reference to Halakhah to the disproportionate representation of racist Jewish Zionists in the news industry?)
Jewish Zionists and their non-Jewish useful idiots will fling any sort of epithets in the effort to prevent Muslims from taking part in a meaningful dialogue about the State of Israel and Zionist crimes against the native Palestinian population.
And this really is the point. If you really want to see some attacks on freedeom of expression, just try challenging the Zionist mythology of the Holocaust or point out that extremist ethnic Ashkenazim were up to their eyeballs in assassination, sabotage, revolutionary activities, mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide in the territories of the Czarist Empire and the Soviet Union before Zionist ethnic Ashkenazim began to carry out their genocidal program in Palestine.
To say such things in the territory of the EU can easily land a person in jail.
Daphne is tossing a red herring into the stew in order to distract us from the Zionist thought control to which everyone in NA and Europe is subject.
Thought Control: CAMERA and Wikipedia is a recent entry in my blog for Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel on the subject of Zionist thought control.
Joachim Martillo,
You like to put down Judaism and I can understand that. You hate Judaism.
Now, can you give concrete examples from today's world where Jewish women are treated worse than Muslim women according to the religious legal law of each religion? Please don't compare the most liberal Muslims with the most close-minded Jews. Take an average Jewish community and an average Muslim community and see where women fare better.
You can start with polygamy, inheritance laws, modesty laws, the 'right' of a husband to beat his wife and child custody laws.
You could also take a look at the article you're currently commenting on. I don't know of any comparable problem in Jewish communities. How many Jewish girls are afraid their older brothers or fathers would kill them for pre-marital sex?
You think you're doing Muslim girls a favor by telling them their life is rosy compared to those poor Jewish girls who don't really have to worry about being killed for spoiling the family honor?
As for 'saying things in the EU' - you sound very dramatic, but there are quite a few open antisemites and anti-Zionists in the EU. They get free reign. I don't know when's the last time you picked up a European newspaper, but when you do, you're more likely to run into editorials calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state than editorials asking questions about EU funding of Arab terrorism.
Dear Esther,
I am a Jewish studies scholar and studied with the Talner Rebber (Rabbi Professor Twersky).
I do not hate Judaism. I hate mendacity and racist incitement.
You are confusing issues of culture and religion.
If we are discussing sharia, we are discussing religion. If we are discussing purdah or the burkah, we are discussing culture.
If we are discussing the hijab or the stirntikhl, we are probably straddling religion and culture in our discussion.
In comparison with Islamic or Karaite Jewish religious law, Rabbinic halakhah is without doubt the harshest.
Neither Islam nor Karaite Judaism forces women into the status of agunot.
I could probably teach a fairly substantial course on the subject of honor killings within Jewish communities from medieval to modern times, but such killings within Judaism as within Islam belong to some of the cultures within which Jewish or Islamic religions are practiced and are condemned by the practically all mainstream religious interpretations and legal codes.
Neither Islam nor Karaite Judaism forces women into the status of agunot.
Islam doesn't need to - a man can marry more wives. A wife cannot marry another man until her husband grants her a divorce.
You touched a very sensitive point in Judaism, but you simply ignored all the other problems in Islam.
Burkas are a cultural way of dealing with a religious requirement. You can ask any Jewish or Muslim woman wears a headscarf or covers her neck etc, and they will tell you they do so for religious reasons, not cultural reasons.
I am glad you could teach about honor killing in the past. I am aware that women in the past were treated worse by everybody. I am talking about the present. How is your insistence that Jews are the devil incarnate helping Muslim girls? If you go to Muslim sites, you would see questions from girls about rape and incest - girls begging for help because their family and religious community aren't helping them. Can you link here to any such comparable Jewish sites?
You do make a very interesting point. Jews living in Muslim countries adopted Arab cultural norms. So let's look at the situation today in Jewish culture and Arab culture. Israel vs. secular Arab countries - where are women better off? Where are *Arab* women better off?
I forgot to add re condemnation. You say Muslim authorities condemn honor killings?
Let's start with the idea behind honor killings. Honor killing do not happen in societies where the murderer is considered a bad man. Honor killings only take place in societies and communities where the murderer get his honor back by committing the murder.
Are honor murderers banned from mosques? (NO) Are they considered heroes in their religious community? (YES) Do imams across the Muslims world speak and ACT against honor murders? (NO)
You speak of Jewish/Zionist conspiracies, but it is not the Jews who force Muslims to kill their daughters and sisters.
"As a scholar of religions (and not as a religious scholar), I can point out that there simply is not much in the way of difference between traditional Christianity, Islam, and Judaism."
As a scholar you should go back to school and retake youe exams. There is a fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity. Christianity recognises the separation of the state and religion. Islam does not recosnise this separation and wants all its abominmal laws enacted in government.
Christianity did away with the obnoxious power of the church as a political power. As soon as Islam recognises this separation and gets rid of mullahs and ayatollahs running countries we might get some moderation.
We also might get some moderation if anti semitic people stopped trying to disguise their hatred of jews by using the euphemism zionist.
daphne,
don't feel bad, but it is You who doesn't have a grasp on the topic. You pointed out one difference between religions (actually a political difference, and not religious) and imply that thus the religious are incomparable - and - obviously that one religion is better than another, or at least should be supported more.
Then You separate a fundamentalist aspect of one (sharia) and consider it a mainstream, and also insist that a fundamentalist side of another (zionism, or however would you like) is not important and should not be taken into account.
It's shame on you, westerners - as you clearly feel guilty for any crime committed on the world during last 6000 years and don't feel having any right to speak freely (fortunately, I'm not one of you, neither of Jews or Muslims - so I've got no such complexes and there is no rule in my country which bans my freedom to criticize anyone). And You know, there is really no need to call any Muslim or Jew a fascist, as You just did. Yes, Jews have lived along with us for millennia - so we have many things to be thankful and to hate them for. Yes, Muslims are occupying our cities, our culture... but we must be very thankful to them for many scientific and cultural innovations in Europe. As well for an idea of separation of government and religion...
And there is not much difference whether one supports Jews or Muslims. Instead, one would do a huge mistake to forget about one's culture while defending either of these. If you want to live along with some other culture, that doesn't necessarily mean that your and other cultures must sacrifice their identities and values.
(And yes, what was called "a zionist mythology", is indeed an example of such try to put one culture above all the others. Unfortunately, an absolute majority of Europeans take everything involving the holocaust as granted. But why do they forget countless other genocides in Armenia, Ukraine, Kosova, Ichkeria, .... ? Why do they allow, e.g., for Putin to destroy schools and to kill hundreds of innocent children - in modern Europe of the 21st century!? Come on - we have bigger problems: the global warming, gay discrimination, human rights for chimps- let's forget that holocaust bullshit and move along)
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