The legal ruling for abortion of a deformed foetus (A jurisprudential study in the light of recent medical developments)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The great scientific development that we are seeing in various fields, and the medical field isn’t immune to it, all of that opened the door for questions about different issues, and among these issues what medical scientists have reached from monitoring the condition of the foetus while it is still in the mother's womb, and determining whether it is normal or defective with congenital malformations, and the ability to determine the type of malformations that the foetus suffers from, the degree of its severity, and the disability resulted after birth, then the question is: what is the ruling of Sharia on aborting a foetus whose deformity has been medically proven? Despite the many writings about the topic of abortion a distorted foetus; however, most of these writings dealt with the topic in general, whether from a legal or medical aspect, and although there are few of them who elaborate on the provisions of the malformed foetus in terms of the ruling on aborting it and the consequences of that, however, this research was distinct from previous researches that it’s: firstly: it combined between medical and legal aspects, by presenting everything related to the issue from a medical point of view, through referring directly to specialized medical sources - Scientific theses, field studies, published medical researches-, then mentioned Sharia ruling based on what was previously presented of medical facts and data. Secondly: presenting and discussing the sayings of contemporary scholars about this issue as the recent medical examinations have summoned - Such as early detection of foetuses distortion and determining their severity- reconsideration of the ruling on foetuses abortion by those who are qualified among the contemporary scholars of the Ummah, and in our research, we have quoted the views of a bunch of these scholars with discussion and analysis to determine the most correct of the those views. The inductive method and the comparative analytical method were adopted in this research. we searched in the medical aspect and finding out the latest medical advances in this field to display it on Sharia rulings that show us the absolute prohibition of abortion of a deformed foetus, regardless of the degree of deformity and whatever its type, and whether the abortion was before or after the soul was breathed in, as the judging that the foetus is deformed or defective is not more than an expectation, and expectation cannot be included in case of necessity due to the lack of a certainty document for the occurrence of the forewarned. The research has included an introductory chapter, which included the search terms definition with an explanation of the causes and types of foetuses distortions, and a first chapter; included the general ruling of abortion according to the jurists, and a second chapter; included the ruling of abortion of a deformed foetus in Islamic jurisprudence, then we concluded the research with the most important findings and recommendations that came out of the research.