TEL AVIV.- In Israel They evaluate suspending the bureaucratic process to accept abortion in Israeli hostages who have become pregnant after being raped by the captors of the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.
According to information from the local media Wallaany Israeli woman who conceived during her captivity will be able to decide whether to keep the baby or terminate the pregnancy after her release.
In Israel, a pregnancy termination committee normally determines whether the abortion request is admissible. However, officials in the Israeli ministries of Welfare and Health make detailed plans to bypass this bureaucratic step and allow the termination of unwanted pregnancies in the women who were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in the brutal and bloody attack on October 7.
Attention to the hostages
Civilian authorities and the Israel Defense Forces are creating a program to coordinate all available resources to provide care to hostages who were victims of sexual abuse. Among them, pregnant women, who will also receive medical and psychological assistance.
For this, the Wolfson Medical Center in the city of Holon would be made available, which already has its infrastructure prepared and has established protocols to receive the released captives.
In the first stage, medical staff will examine patients for injuries and, if one is pregnant, the development of the fetus will be evaluated.
For the second phase, assistance will be provided to the Hamas hostages to process the trauma and so they can decide whether to terminate the pregnancy, if it is safe for the surrogate, or to carry it to term, the media indicated.
Israeli women who decide to continue with the pregnancy and keep the babies, will receive financial, legal and mental health support from the government.
Pressure on Israel
Almost four months after the Hamas attack, more than 130 Israelis still in the hands of terroristsincluding young women and adolescents, who, according to preliminary information, have been subjected to sexual abuse during the attack, as evidenced in the videos spread on social networks, and in captivity.
Chen Almog-Goldstein, 49, a hostage who was released from captivity after more than 50 days in Gaza, during a debate in the Israeli Parliament, revealed that some of the youngest hostages have stopped menstruating.
“There are girls who haven’t had their period for a long time.. Maybe we all have to pray that their bodies protect them and that they do not become pregnant from rape,” she indicated.
Relatives of captive women pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to foreign leaders to expedite the releases of the remaining hostages. This, given the possibility that the risk of pregnancy increases the longer they remain in captivity.
Worry
The main concern of families of kidnapped women is that if release is not achieved for a few months, it may be too late to end an unwanted pregnancy.
“I’m not sure how they will manage, but we must prepare now for this terrible theoretical possibility of a woman conceiving or raising such a child. Therefore, we must stop this atrocitynot allowing the captives to die there, bringing them back and providing care for them,” Professor Tal Biron-Shental, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, told the newspaper. Maariv.
Videos spread on social media during the attack and harrowing accounts shared by the freed hostages are fueling fears that sexual violence in the Gaza tunnels, where the Israelis are believed to be held, is increasing.
Aviva Siegel, a recently freed captive, told Congress that Hamas members brought captives “inappropriate clothing, doll clothes.”
The hostages have become “puppets with which they could do whatever they wantedwhenever they wanted, and it is incredible that they are still there,” Siegel emphasized.
Source: With information from The New York Post / Walla
