Proactive versus Reactive Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights: A Comparative Case Study Analysis of Morocco and Tunisia

Abstract

Morocco and Tunisia, two progressive Muslim-majority countries, took vastly different approaches to women’s sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). Sharing a French colonial past and Maliki Islamic tradition, Tunisia is an emerging democracy with a long history of top-down women’s rights advances and state-promoted SRHR. Tunisian women have benefitted from SRH education, access to contraception, emergency contraception, and state-funded first trimester abortion. Tunisia targets vulnerable populations, including unmarried, minor, rural, and poor women, with special clinics and subsidies. Finally, Tunisia holds men responsible for children they father outside of wedlock. In contrast, Morocco’s bottom-up feminist-driven approach to SRHR, including access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion, is circumscribed and exclusionary, targeting married couples. The criminalization of extramarital sexual relations and most abortions force single women with unwanted pregnancies to resort to unsafe abortion. Moroccan men who father children outside of marriage enjoy legal impunity from paternal responsibilities. Nevertheless, the recent rise of Islamic parties in both countries poses a potential threat to Tunisia’s proactive laws and policies governing SRHR, while adding another obstacle to adequate SRHR provision in Morocco.