Sherine Hamdy, a professor of Muslim bioethics at the University of California, Irvine, notes that for Muslim women, the U.S. anti-abortion trends are worrying not only because they harm women’s rights to reproductive agency, but also because they diminish religious freedoms, since Muslim religious ethics make a strong case for women’s well-being taking priority over that of the fetus. [emphasis mine]
This means that Americans in states that effectively outlaw abortion, including Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, will have fewer human rights protections than those in Iran or Saudi Arabia—countries that are often vilified by politicians across the ideological spectrum for their treatment of women. Iran, for example, allows abortion in cases of fetal impairment, and Saudi Arabia allows for abortion when the health of a patient is at risk—including mental health, which can function to allow for abortion in cases of rape or incest—contrary to only the narrow “life” or “medical emergency” exceptions that are now increasingly common in state bans in the United States. [emphasis mine]
It’s just UAE, not Middle East.
The UAE here is actually catching up with other Middle Eastern countries:
Haaretz May 26, 2019: Alabama, Iran, or Saudi Arabia? We Checked Where Abortion Laws Are Better for Women.
The Center for American Progress JUL 8, 2022: Authoritarian Regimes Have More Progressive Abortion Policies Than Some U.S. States.