Twelve-Year-Old “Child-Bride” in Yemen Dies in Labor

Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, 12, is the latest victim of the tradition of child-bride under Sharia law in some Muslim countries. She died after three-days of labor trying to give birth to a child that was the result of her marriage to a 24-year-old man in Yemen. She was eleven at the time. The baby also reportedly died.

We have been following these child-bride cases, here and here.

In most nations, this would be treated as a simple and straightforward case of child rape. However, in Yemen, over a quarter of the country’s females marry before age 15.

While the Parliament passed a law to raise the age of such brides to 17, it was sent back to committee after religious lawmakers declared it “unIslamic.”

Complicating the issue for some is the fact that Mohammad himself married 6-year-old Aisha, a union that was consummated when she was 9.

For the full story, click here and here.