An Israeli hostage who became pregnant after being raped by her Hamas captors in the Gaza Strip will have to decide whether to keep her baby or terminate the pregnancy after her release, according to a new report.
Officials from Israel's Health and Health ministries are drawing up detailed plans to deal with the possibility of unwanted pregnancies in women kidnapped by terrorists after the deadly Oct. 7 attack. This was reported by local news station Walla!
In Israel, an abortion committee normally decides whether to grant an abortion request, but authorities are considering bypassing that step in the case of pregnant former prisoners of war to avoid red tape.
Nearly four months later, more than 130 Israelis, including young women and teenage girls, remain under Hamas' control, following the initial onslaught, as seen in a gruesome video circulating online. There is also preliminary information that some people have been sexually abused in both cases. and a state of confinement.
Civilian authorities, with support from the Israel Defense Forces, coordinate all available resources to treat sexually abused hostages (including women in various stages of pregnancy) and provide medical and psychological assistance. We are creating a program to receive support.
Holon's Wolfson Hospital has already prepared its infrastructure and established procedures to receive released prisoners. As part of the first phase, medical staff will examine each patient for injuries and, if a patient is found to be pregnant, assess the development of the fetus.
In the second phase, former Hamas hostages will be provided with assistance in processing their trauma. At that point, a decision must be made whether to terminate the pregnancy if it is safe for the mother to do so, or to carry the pregnancy to term.
Women who decide to keep their babies will receive financial, legal and mental health support from the government, the newspaper reported.
During a debate in Israel's parliament on Tuesday, Chen Almog Goldstein, 49, who was released after spending more than 50 days in Gaza, said some of the young female hostages had stopped menstruating. revealed.
“There are girls who don't get their periods for a long time. Perhaps we all have to pray that their bodies will protect them and that they will not become pregnant through rape,” she said.
Relatives of female prisoners have warned that the longer their loved ones are held captive, the more likely they are to become pregnant, as they urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign leaders to move quickly to free the remaining hostages. He emphasized that there is an increased risk of
The main concern is that if the women are not released for a few more months, it will be too late to terminate their pregnancies.
“We don't know how they will cope, but we must prepare now for the terrifying theoretical possibility that women will conceive or raise such children. We have to stop the prisoners and not allow them to die there, bring them back and provide them with care,” Professor Tal Biron Shental, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, said recently. . told Israeli publication Maariv.
Harrowing accounts from former hostages have raised concerns that sexual violence is rampant in the tunnels in the Gaza Strip where Israelis are believed to be held.
Former POW Aviva Siegel recently told Israeli parliamentarians that she witnessed members of the terror group bringing “inappropriate clothes, doll clothes” to female prisoners of war.
The female hostages “have become puppets who can do what they want, when they want, and it's hard to believe they're still there,” Siegel said.
Eli Albag, the father of 18-year-old Lili Albag, who was snatched from her bed by Hamas attackers on October 7 and has not been heard from for more than 50 days, told reporters in London this week. Freed prisoners looked away to see if the women were being raped.
“She was silent, but her face moved, so I knew something had happened there,” he recalled. “The hostages saw something, but they didn't want to tell us.”
“We believe that some of the girls – this is very difficult to say – [the terrorists] We are worried because he sexually attacked her,” the heartbroken father added.
