Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/278

I find no explicit information concerning contraception in Mohammedan countries. The Koran, however, does not condemn abortion although it explicitly forbids infanticide. And Rique^[1] reports that the Arabs punctured the amniotic membranes when abortion was desired. This custom probably was an ancient one with them.

Havelock Ellis^[2] points out that "Even in the Islamic world of the Arabian Nights we find that high praise is accorded to the 'virtue and courage' of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this involuntary union, 'not wishing,' she said, 'to take the responsibility before Allah of a child that had been born without my consent.' The approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the public of Islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not have a child, except by her own deliberate will." (Mardrus, "Les Milles Nuits," vol. xvi, p. 158.")