Rabat - The number of abandoned babies in Morocco is on the rise.
Moroccan activist and champion of single mother's rights, Aicha Chenna, has revealed on Wednesday that 24 out of 153 babies born out of wedlock every day in Morocco are being abandoned and waiting to be claimed.
Speaking during the National Meeting on Abortion organized in the capital Rabat on Wednesday, Aicha Chenna, the founder of Solidarité Feminine Association, quoted a study conducted between 2003 and 2009 that estimates the number of unwed mothers in Morocco at 200 thousands and the number of births out of wedlock at 500 thousands. She added that the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers currently stands at 13.46 percent of the total births in the kingdom.
Labeled as the Moroccan "Mother Teresa," Chenna stressed during the meeting that the lack of sex and preventive education in schools in addition to what she described as "societal hypocrisy" with regards to illegal sexual practices, especially among young people, are the main reasons behind the rise in numbers of abandoned and undocumented babies.
During her intervention, Chenna called on religious scholars and Imams to use mosques not only to tell people about hell and heaven and the afterlife, but also to play a greater role in consolidating the foundations of sexual education among Moroccans from religious texts, adding that Islam is very advanced in terms of sex education.
Chenna, who in 2009 was awarded the world's largest faith based prize for entrepreneurship, the Opus Prize, for her life achievement as a social activist, explained her stance on the termination of pregnancies in cases of malformation or rape and incest, calling for unrestricted right for women to have abortions or not.
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