“abortion ship” docked in Morocco in early September -Interior Ministry

The ship which has been alleged to be the “abortion ship” is but a sailing boat which had docked at Marina Smir (northern city of M’diq) on 2 September as part of a cruise, the Interior Ministry said.

 The Moroccan authorities have prevented the “abortion shp” from entering the Moroccan port of Smir.

In a clarification statement, the ministry said that the media reports on the docking, for a few days now, of the “abortion ship” in the north of Morocco are only a diversionary tactic aimed at ensuring that the Moroccan authorities would not prevent the ship from docking, on October 4, in Marina Smir.

The statement pointed out that the ship, subject of media reports, is the subject of the press release issued on 3 October by the Moroccan Health Ministry in which it made clear that it had not authorized any party or any doctor non-resident in Morocco to carry out abortion operations on Moroccan women.

The Health Ministry had urged the competent authorities to enforce the law.

Given that the authorities concerned had taken all the precautionary measures to prevent the possible docking of the “abortion ship” in Moroccan waters, the two Dutch woman on board the boat waved, on Thursday afternoon, a banner in solidarity with the ship in question in an attempt to divert the attention of the media away from the failure of this operation.

The statement said that the public authorities drew the attention of the crew of the sailing boat to the need to respect legal provisions. Therefore, the boat left Moroccan waters.