Abortion in Islam

The Graduated Position

Islamic jurisprudence distinguishes between stages of pregnancy based on the concept of nafkh al-ruh (the ensoulment of the foetus), which occurs at 120 days (four months) according to the hadith in Bukhari and Muslim describing the stages of human creation.

The 120-day threshold comes from the hadith of Ibn Mas’ud in Bukhari and Muslim, in which the Prophet ﷺ described the stages of creation in the womb as three periods of forty days, after which the soul is breathed into the foetus. This is the textual anchor for the fiqh distinction between pre- and post-ensoulment, and it is the reason Islamic law treats the two stages differently.

Before ensoulment, the madhabs differ. The Hanafi school was the most permissive of pre-ensoulment abortion for valid reasons. The Shafi’i school had differing views within it. The Hanbali school was more restrictive, and the Maliki school was the most restrictive of the four, with some Maliki scholars prohibiting termination from conception.

Contemporary scholarship generally permits abortion before the 120-day mark in narrow circumstances: established health risk to the mother, severe foetal abnormality incompatible with life, or pregnancy resulting from assault, though scholars differ on which of these qualify and on the standard of evidence required. The Hanafi tradition is the most accommodating; the Maliki tradition is the most restrictive.

After ensoulment, abortion is prohibited unless continuing the pregnancy poses a serious, medically established risk to the mother's life. In that case, preserving the mother's life takes precedence, on the jurisprudential principle that the mother is the root and the foetus the branch.

Islam neither treats abortion as a casual choice nor as an absolute prohibition in all circumstances. It takes both lives seriously: and where they are in conflict, it provides a framework rather than a slogan.