- Iraqi doctor noticed lower than normal pregnancy rates among sex slaves
- Islamic law rules a man may not rape a female slave if she is pregnant
- Jihadis are getting round law by injecting women with contraceptives
- There are thought to be over 3,000 Yazidi women still in ISIS captivity
- ISIS encourages keeping ‘unbelievers’ as slaves to be raped and beaten
ISIS fighters are reportedly forcing sex slaves to take contraceptives to get round Islamic law which says unmarried women being kept captive must not be pregnant when they are raped.
Sexual slavery has become commonplace in the Islamic State, with young women – largely captives from the Yazidi minority group – being bought and sold between fighters.
But a ruling in Islamic law states that a man must undertake a period of sexual abstinence, known as Istibra, after buying a new slave – to ensure the women is not pregnant.
Not wanting to wait up to a month and to maintain the numbers of slaves, many Islamic fighters have turned to modern medicine to circumvent the laws by which they have chosen to live, those which also make slavery permissible.
Yazidi women being kept captive by ISIS fighters as sex slaves are being forced to take contraceptives and undergo painful abortions if they are found to be pregnant after being bought. Pictured are two woman kept captive for nine months, one of whom was forced to abort her own baby
There are thought to be around 3,000 Yazidi women and girls being held as sex slaves by jihadis across the so-called Caliphate
The practice of forcing women in captivity to take birth control pills, or injecting them with the Depro-Provera hormonal contraceptive themselves has, according to an investigation by the New York Times, become widespread.
The newspaper spoke with 37 Yazidi women who had escaped their Islamic State captors.
Many of them said that when they were bought by a new fighter, the seller would often be asked to prove that the woman was taking a contraceptive.
It had also been reported previously that jihadis would bring their own gynaecologists to ‘slave markets’ in the Sinjar region of Iraq where captured Yazidi women who were found to be pregnant would be subjected to painful abortions.
Members of the minority Yazidi sect who were freed by Islamic State militants hug each other on the outskirts of Kirkuk on April 8, 2015. Elderly and infirm women are more likely to be freed than younger women – who are kept as slaves