Health Minister S Subramaniam said at present only one mufti had come forward to clarify the matter.
“It must be agreed to by other muftis, too. This is important. It will help the professionals in the country to give advice to patients infected with the virus during pregnancy.
“The matter of abortion in Malaysia is a shared matter between the professionals and religious experts. That is our system. We are guided by this,” he said during a press conference after launching the 11th Allied Health Scientific Conference Malaysia 2016 here today.
Subramaniam was asked to comment on the Federal Territories (FT) mufti’s approval of abortion for pregnant mothers infected with the Zika virus.
He said the country’s laws allowed only therapeutic abortion, where an abortion was only allowed if a mother’s life was in danger, not the baby’s. He said, in view of that, the ministry needed a consensus from the National Fatwa Council on this matter.
In Singapore, he said, it was a different matter as abortion was legal in the republic.
“The fatwa council will need to deliberate on the issue to help us draw guidelines for the public.”
The FT mufti’s office referred to the 1990 decision by the Islamic Juridical Council of the Muslim World League, an international non-governmental Islamic organisation based in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that had approved abortion in cases of thalassaemia, a blood disorder, even after 16 weeks of pregnancy, or 120 days.
The FT mufti also cited Dar al-Ifta’ al-Misriyyah, an Egyptian educational institute and government body, that issued a fatwa on March 14 on Zika infection. The edict approved the abortion of foetuses before 16 weeks of pregnancy if there were confirmed implications for the mother and defects of the foetus.
A man living in Sabah, who had contracted Zika locally, died on Saturday from heart complications. Another Malaysian, the first recorded to have been infected with Zika in the country, is reportedly recovering.
In general, abortions are safely performed in the first trimester, before the 12th week of pregnancy.
Zika is carried by Aedes mosquitoes, which transmit it to humans, It is also passed through sex.